The restaurant issue
Swoony's, Foxface Natural, Nōksu, Radio Kwara, Eulalie, Raf's, Sailor, Café Carmellini, Sushi Ichimura, Anton's
Welcome to a special Black Friday restaurant issue of FOUND. Here’s what’s on order today: our first take on Swoony’s, a perfect winter restaurant, followed by nine of our favorite FOUND dining expeditions from fall ‘23 thus far.
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Swoony’s winter tonic
Just as Cafe Spaghetti is a perfect restaurant for summer, Swoony’s — another Columbia Street Waterfront spot from owner and chef Salvatore Lamboglia, just around the corner from its sister — is a perfect one for winter.
At this self-styled American bistro, a dark wood bar runs down the left side of the room, with liquor bottles aglow, and a cozy dining room in the back. What really matters, design-wise: they got the lighting exactly right.
On a recent weeknight, one thing was obvious: this place moves a lot of burgers. That it’s a particularly messy affair — two patties heavily slathered in Thousand Island and served on an English muffin — suits the vibe: Like at Cafe Spaghetti, the food here is comfortable being what it is (see also, for starters: wedge salad, clams casino). When the game gets slightly more ambitious, it can work (the dorade, served “classic Manhattan clam chowder” style — the fish set atop clams in their shells and a tomato broth in the bowl below), or not (short ribs au poivre, no improvement on a steak).
This isn’t a destination restaurant, but for anyone within a stone’s throw, Swoony’s just solved this microhood’s seasonal affective disorder. –Lockhart Steele
→ Swoony’s (Columbia St. Waterfront), 215 Columbia St., Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Foxface Natural is blowing up as we type
Last Wednesday night, 7:45p, Alphabet City — a couple pushed through the door into the narrow entryway of Foxface Natural on upper Avenue A. After perusing the menu, they engaged in a brief conversation, then turned around and left, leaving empty the two seats at the end of the bar.
Big mistake. Huge.
Foxface Natural, which opened in May, is about to blow up. When we asked our server how it’s been going, she leaned in conspiratorially. “We’re going to have some pretty big reviews coming out next week,” she said. (Almost on cue, the New Yorker dropped a rave. Then Pete Wells awards three stars, in tomorrow’s NYT.)
It will be harder to find empty bar seats — and you do want to sit at the long bar that almost runs the length of the restaurant, not at the few tables sprinkled around — but get here: This is wildly exciting eating.
The overall scope of the menu is impossible to classify. (Check this sample menu for a sense of it, and if you order the kangaroo tartare, do report back.) It’s all happening in a tight East Village setting that recalls the early years of Momofuku right down to the awning that lists only the building address.
“I can’t stop eating this,” my dining companion said to me as we somehow made it through two entrees, smoked Boer goat and Montauk striped bass roasted on the bone in a wood oven, doused in a beguiling tomato sauce. (Our server recommended sharing one main. This is correct.) Along with the bass came a single Italian frying pepper on its own plate, with anchovy: exactly what I want to be eating right now. Which is precisely how I feel about Foxface Natural. –Lockhart Steele, 09/19
→ Foxface Natural, 189 Avenue A (East Village), Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Underground gourmet
Even as the stretch of Broadway north of 23rd Street has come up in the world, Herald Square? Not so much. It remains one of the least appealing places in Manhattan, ranking just above its decrepit subway station. Yet there we were last week, taking the stairs down to Nōksu, which sits behind a black door with a keypad lock.
Before the descent, our primary frame of reference for NYC’s subway-vestibule eating and drinking establishments (excluding major transit hubs) was Siberia, a legendarily divey dive bar originally located in the 1/9 stop at 50th and Broadway. There was nothing “tasting menu” about that place, Nonetheless, it was top of mind as we typed in our secret code and unlocked the door to Nōksu.
Nōksu is the opposite of Siberia. Through the keypadded door (the code changes daily) lies a sleek 13-seat black and white counter with plush bar seats. To the left, a spotless open kitchen, where chef Dae Kim and team prepare a 12-course, seafood-centric, Korean-inflected tasting menu.
If you’re the sort of person who hears about a new $225 tasting menu and gets flushed, you should go to Nōksu: press-friendly narrative notwithstanding, this is a serious entrant into the upper echelon of NYC counter dining. (Among the best courses: an oyster swimming in broth with fluke and prawn, and surf clam, buried in hen egg custard, scallion emulsion, and caviar.)
Even if you pointedly avoid this kind of thing, perhaps Nōksu should be the exception to your rule. As a New York City restaurant, Nōksu is very good. As a New York CIty experience, it’s excellent. Stepping from a battered and bruised subway station tunnel into a pristine jewel box of a restaurant: Not something you’ll forget anytime soon. (Also, “I had dinner recently in the Herald Square subway station,” a top-notch conversation starter in just about any situation.)
One missed connection: the discordant stream of ’80s pop and rock that didn’t pair with the youthful enthusiasm of Kim’s cooking. By course 12, we were ready to leave Steve Winwood behind for the evening. But that was okay, we had a train to catch, right outside the door, and back into the bowels of the city. –Josh Albertson, 10/10
→ Nōksu (Herald Square) • 49 W. 32nd St. • 5:30p and 8:30p seatings, Tues.-Sat. • Reserve, $225 per with optional $175 beverage pairing.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Radio Kwara dials it up
It took a minute to figure out that the short narrative story on the piece of paper set in front of us at Radio Kwara was our menu. “Someone once asked me, what do you miss about Ilorin [Nigeria]?,” it began. “I miss a time when all I was consumed with was playing Super Mario and eating Indomie noodles.”
Those noodles — very much in the spirit of dorm-room ramen, but served here in a dazzling goat-pepper soup — arrived as the third of seven dishes plated by chef Ayo Balogun in the tiny open kitchen at the back of the restaurant (above). I, too, have already found myself missing them.
Balogun is also the proprietor of Dept. of Culture, the Bed-Stuy Nigerian restaurant. At his new spot in Clinton Hill, he’s been serving a tasting menu only, Friday and Saturday nights for the past three months.
We’d arrived right at 6p for the evening’s first seating and been informed that the restaurant is BYOB. No worries: there’s a hip wine store, Radicle Wine, right next door. A bowl of boiled peanuts arrived first, followed by fish pepper soup — red snapper served in a spicy, peppery brown broth with cilantro, apparently common fare at Nigerian beer parlors (to their great credit). Later in the meal: guinea fowl and fried yam, both delicious.
During our tapioca dessert, Balogun, a very friendly fellow, came over to chat. Caught up in the moment, the chef then gave an impromptu speech to everyone in the restaurant, only to find himself topped by a diner who shared a cheat code to one of Balogun’s favorite video games. The chef was delighted, as were we. –Lockhart Steele, 09/24
→ Radio Kwara (Clinton Hill) • 291 Greene Ave. • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Eulalie upturns her violet eye on Tribeca
“You’re due at X in 30 minutes.” For most restaurants these days, an automated text from a reservation app is the first point of communication with your hosts. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Last month, I stumbled upon the charming (daresay, retro) restaurant blog from the proprietors of Tribeca’s forthcoming Eulalie. I searched the website for a reservations link. Nothing. Just a phone number, at the bottom of the page. I called it, and voicemail picked up: “You’ve found us,” it began. I left a message.
A couple of hours later, my phone rang. “Apologies for the noise in the background,” I said, “that’s my two-year-old daughter in the tub.” “Apologies for the noise in my background,” the woman on the other end of the line replied without missing a beat. “That’s my husband in the kitchen!” After a little more back-and-forth, our table at Eulalie was booked for the following week. I had just been charmed, for the first time, by Tina Vaughn.
Vaughn, with husband Chip Smith, ran Upper East Side restaurant The Simone for nearly a decade, until they lost the lease last year. Now, they’re opening in the old Bâtard space on West Broadway next door to Frenchette, continuing the style of extremely personal service that won them ardent fans uptown. She’s the front of the house, he’s the back, filtering French cooking through his own lens. The entire experience is something deeply personal, down to the handwritten menus and repeated visits by Tina to our properly white-tablecloth-clad table to check on our progress throughout the four-course dinner.
Across the dining room, we spotted old friends who live on the Upper East Side, and followed Tina and Chip south to their new home, as many regulars from The Simone surely will. (On this night, we were, as Tina told us upon arrival, “our new people.”) The meal stretched three hours; we savored all of it, especially a “middle treat” of fish quenelle with caviar, materializing between appetizers and mains.
On our way out the door just before 10p, a hello from Chip, out from the kitchen, and a warm farewell from Tina, with our thanks for a very generous evening. If all of this sounds like something you might like to experience, Eulalie’s phone number can be found below. And should you go, as a final treat, they won’t follow up with an email survey about your experience — as it once was, and maybe should always be. –Lockhart Steele, 10/17
→ Eulalie (Tribeca), 239 West Broadway • Dinner prix fixe $115, wine pairings $85 • Call to reserve: 646-476-2380.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
A quiet lunch in the in-between
There is a liminal quality to the blocks framed by Lafayette and Bowery to the west and east, Houston and Bleecker to the south and north — Mulberry, Mott, Elizabeth — not Soho, not East Village, maybe technically Noho, but maybe not quite yet.
These blocks have always felt like their own worlds: shaded, quiet, a little bit secret. Raf’s, which opened this spring at 290 Elizabeth St., is of course nobody’s secret, but it is special and, at 11:45a on a September Wednesday, very much the tucked away haven of your New York City dreams.
The restaurant occupies the old Parisi Bakery space on the east side of the block (where for a short time in the aughts we used to get sort-of-secret sandwiches from Crosby Connection), next door to Tom & Jerry’s, the enduring neighborhood watering hole that nurtured a generation of NYC media and tech. Raf’s space is small and elegant, with marble framing the bar up front, and banquettes and a ceiling mural warming the dining room in back.
We were the first to sit for a 12p reservation on one of the restaurant’s first days of lunch service, which began post-Labor Day. To start: a simple, crisp endive salad and an excellent steak tartare with anchovies, mint, and a bloom of Parmigiano Reggiano. Next: decadent rigatoni alla Trapanese and an expertly fried pork collar, the latter accompanied by a bracing celery and cherry pepper julienne and a quenelle of neonata sauce so good we had to refrain from cleaning the plate with the edges of our forks.
By the time our bomboloncini arrived (also excellent), we could feel the build to what would undoubtedly be a raucous dinner service at one of the hottest reservations in town. But it was still quiet on Elizabeth St. between Houston and Bleecker, where Raf's for lunch is a very good idea. –Josh Albertson, 09/26
→ Raf's (Okay, Noho) • 290 Elizabeth St. • Reserve (consider lunch with an old friend).
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Sailor sets a course in Fort Greene
Sailor, the new Fort Greene spot from chef April Bloomfield and restaurateur Gabriel Stulman, is a small restaurant. Not surprising, given the way Stulman built his business on tiny restaurants (Joseph Leonard, Fairfax) with outsized impacts. But maybe all the hoopla around Sailor made me expect something grander in physical scope?
No matter. Half a block up from longtime neighborhood standard Roman’s, Sailor occupies an enviable corner, and offers a vibe to match. Alfredo Peredes, store designer for Ralph Lauren and the Polo Bar, designed the room, but it’s still vintage Stulman: quirky, cozy, and, on a recent Saturday night, rocking.
And the food is knockout-grade good. On our four-top, for starters: smoked mackerel pâté, mussel toast, housemade brandade, and pork rillettes. And also, a bonus fifth offering, described on the menu as toast with green sauce. This was my favorite: the ‘green’ is an herb sauce of parsley, mint, marjoram, anchovy, and parmesan. Hello, April Bloomfield, we have missed you. For mains, smoked pork shoulder with fennel and olives, as well as a half roast chicken and roasted potatoes: both terrific, and the kind of food I want to be eating when the darkness starts creeping into the afternoon.
Packing all that Stulman-plus-Bloomfield buzz into this small space means it’s going to be tough to reserve here for a while. For those who like to play the game: each month’s worth of new reservations drops on the 21st. The eight-seat bar (says a FOUND correspondent of the dirty martini: “Might be the best in the city — I’d go back just for that”) and the two bar booths are held each night for walk-ins. Godspeed.
If this all sounds like too much for tonight, consider one of consider one of these nine new, bookable restaurants. Or, drop by Stulman’s Jeffrey’s Grocery in the Village for a plate of oysters, or Jolene in Noho for the chicken Milanese. If Sailor’s voyage tracks like these neighborhood favorites, there will be plenty of time to come aboard. –Lockhart Steele, 10/25
→ Sailor (Fort Greene), 228 Dekalb Ave. • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
The main entrance to Café Carmellini, the grand new restaurant inside the new Fifth Avenue Hotel, is an oversize portal opening onto the avenue. To the west, on 28th St., lies the hotel’s entrance. In between, a set of street-level windows look straight into the restaurant’s kitchen.
As I walked past those windows last Wednesday evening, I spied chef Andrew Carmellini, dressed in his whites, addressing his staff as dinner service was about to start.
Since running the kitchen at Café Boulud more than two decades ago, Carmellini’s been a major force on the New York City restaurant scene. With partners Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard, he’s opened a remarkable string of popular, enduring, very good restaurants — Locanda Verde, Bar Primi, Lafayette, The Dutch, Carne Mare, to name just five. But what Carmellini arguably hasn’t done is swing for the fences.
Until now.
Café Carmellini is the most thrilling big-ticket NYC restaurant opening of the year — a straight-up blockbuster. Sitting in a semicircular plush royal blue booth in the middle of the dining room, my dining companion and I marveled at its scope.
It’s a grand room that feels like it’s long been part of the city’s firmament; the design shares something of its Italian maximalism with Torrisi, last year’s big debut. Here, two giant trees climb from planters in the middle of the room, gesturing upwards to the balconies on the mezzanine framing semi-private tables for groups of four and up. That upper level, not yet open for dining as the restaurant comes up to full steam, will hold some of the most sought-after tables in the city.
At our table in the main dining room, we tasted cooking that married the best of France and Italy, perhaps none better than the duck-duck-duck tortelloni, with its duck-filled pillows, duck glaze, and airy foie gras sauce. It’s a dish I’ve already dreamed about.
But the best reason to get here as soon as possible is the elegant plate of scallops in a coconut-curry sauce, served with a side of basmati rice. The dish is called Scallops Cardoz — a tribute to the late, great chef Floyd Cardoz — and it transported me back to an evening long ago at his pioneering restaurant, Tabla. (Carmellini has indicated that he’ll be rotating out the dish to make way for tributes to other chefs.)
Café Carmellini is fancy enough to suit any celebratory night out, but didn’t feel forced early on a weeknight. Our bill for two was just over $400 — quite reasonable for this level of cooking, in this setting.
At this stage of his career, Carmellini can do whatever he wants. What a win for New York City that he’s doing this. –Lockhart Steele, 11/14
→ Café Carmellini (Nomad), 250 Fifth Ave. • Reserve • Start or finish your night with a cocktail at the hotel’s Portrait Bar.
RESTAURANTS • Kodawari
A sushi legend returns to Tribeca
Welcome to a recurring FOUND feature in which we profile sushi counters practicing kodawari — the uncompromising, relentless pursuit of perfection.
The Skinny: Among the cobblestones of Tribeca comes Sushi Ichimura, the three-month-old, pocket-sized omakase counter from New York sushi legend Eiji Ichimura (Brushstroke, Ichimura at Uchū). It’s the best effort of his storied career.
The Experience: Ichimura’s seasonal Japanese seafood menu is roughly 20 courses and runs $425 before tax and tip. Anchoring the minimalist, manicured space is a pristine 200-year-old cedar wood counter, flanked by 10 velvet seats.
House Manners: This isn’t a formal, buttoned-up experience, but it’s certainly not a casual one: don’t wear shorts, avoid perfume, and speak softly.
Sushi Style: Ichimura’s signature style is restrained and technical. He’s known for extended seafood aging, though on a recent summer visit, buttery and umami-rich fish replaced the bolder flavors at his other counters. (Summer fish is usually aged for a shorter period of time due to its size and fat content.)
The Progression: The meal begins with monaka, a rice-based wafer sandwich loaded with plump Hokkaido uni tongues, Kaviari ossetra caviar, and a mound of fresh wasabi. Next: four otsumami (small, expertly executed appetizers), leading into bites like baby squid the size of a pinky finger. Finally, a showstopper tuna block — lean bluefin marinated in soy sauce leading into double-decker stacked slices of medium fatty tuna, followed by triple-layered slabs of fatty tuna. The legend lives on. –Kat Odell, 09/13
→ Sushi Ichimura (Tribeca) • 412 Greenwich St. • 5:30p & 8:30p seatings, closed Sun. & Mon. • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • FOUND Plate
Love and anchovies
In my early twenties, when I was cooking for one in the Boerum Hill walk-up I shared with my brother, I would often make this addictive, dead-simple pasta:
Heat olive oil and sliced garlic in a pan. Add anchovies. Once the anchovies have melted, add spaghetti and a little reserved pasta water. Try not to eat it all in one sitting.
The spaghetti anchoiade at Anton’s in the West Village is a very grown-up version of this dish — silky and rich, the spaghetti cooked exactly right. It’s on my shortest list of favorite NYC dishes, and is best shared with a friend or loved one.
Saturday night, my birthday, my wife and I ate it at the bar after a day spent driving to and from Port Jefferson for the memorial of an old friend who had died too young.
Anton’s opened in 2019 but feels like it’s been on the corner of Hudson and W. 11th forever. The space was once Frankies 570, and before that, Hudson Corner Cafe — a less ambitious neighborhood hang where my wife worked briefly as a waitress in her early twenties, newly arrived from Michigan. Not long after, the friend from Port Jefferson became her roommate. She’s the one who taught her how to be a New Yorker.
We considered other, more current options for dinner on our way back into the city that night. But we were tired and happily ended up on this perfect West Village corner, sharing this ethereal spaghetti that reminded us of walk-ups and waitress jobs and old friends. –Josh Albertson, 11/1
→ Anton's (West Village) • 570 Hudson St. • spaghetti anchoiade, $23 • Reserve.