PLENTY OF RESTAURANTS closed during the great plague year, of course, but plenty opened, too. While most of us were slumbering on our couches in a Zoom-addled stupor, the irrepressible spirit of the dining world bubbled endlessly on just below the dark surface of things. Menus were composed; spaces leased; plans that had been hatched months, years, and even decades earlier inched forward. As dining sheds sprouted up on the sidewalks last summer, brick-and-mortar operations slowly began to open too. They opened in empty hotel lobbies (Vestry) and empty office towers (Le Pavillon). They opened in Brooklyn (Xilonen, Francie) and in different corners of the Bronx (Hudson Smokehouse), and now, as we emerge from our collective slumber, there are suddenly all sorts of new and unfamiliar places to try—many of which appear to have dropped, fully formed, out of the sky.
At least that’s how it appeared to me a few weeks back, when I wiped the sleep from my eyes and wandered over on a steamy summer evening to try to secure a table at the newish Shanghainese restaurant CheLi, which opened last fall among the jumble of cafés and ramen shacks on St. Marks Place in the East Village. They wouldn’t be able to seat us for a while, I was politely told, and scanning the buzzing room, you could see why. Whole families—including doting grandparents and babies in strollers— crowded around the tables. The owner, a restaurant group called DaShan, has built the space to resemble a quaint Chinese village, complete with carved wooden rooftops and paper lanterns hanging from bamboo rafters. And with the exception of the bustling, competent wait staff, most of the people in the room were conversing in Mandarin and even Shanghainese.
この記事は New York magazine の August 2 - 15, 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は New York magazine の August 2 - 15, 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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