Cold Comforts

Two downtown Asian-inspired kitchens brave the elements with distinctly personal, creative cooking.

- By Adam Platt

Spotting hopeful dining trends isn’t easy these days, but if you look closely, it’s possible to divine a few green shoots of promise rising here and there around the city’s increasingly chilly, covid-challenged restaurant landscape. Anyone who has perused the bountiful holiday delivery treats available around town knows that the takeout business continues to blossom. As an avid consumer of grains, sauces, and coffee beans, I have also enjoyed the new “pantry” option that has been sprouting up lately on local restaurants’ websites. Inventive Asian cooking at small, nimble establishments like Connie Chung’s excellent Chinese café, Milu, in the Flatiron District, seems to be on the upswing, too, and like at Milu, which Chung opened after a long stint at Eleven Madison Park, many of these accomplished chefs happen to be women.

Kay Hyun, whose latest East Village “Korean tapas” restaurant, Mokyo, opened in February, also labored for a variety of grand male chefs (Jean-Georges, Nobu) before striking out on her own. Her first popular East Village restaurant, Thursday Kitchen, specializes in comfort recipes like sweet-and-spicy popcorn chicken and empanadas stuffed with duck confit, but this latest venture has clearly been conceived with a slightly more intricate brand of cooking in mind. There are two varieties of Wagyu on the menu (steak and oxtail) and delicate salads made with winter persimmons and vinaigrettes flavored with cashew, and if you call for the house dumplings, you’ll find them folded around deposits of sweet-corn purée and set in pools of salsa verde touched with truffles.