when you want, where you want.
Where to Eat in March
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question: Where should we go? These are the spots that our food team thinks everyone should visit, for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that’s flown too far under the radar). This month: Danji returns, a wine bar is interesting for a change, a curse may be broken, and more.
Golden HOF and NY Kimchi (Midtown)
As a rule, steakhouses evolve only begrudgingly; they are only occasionally allowed to thaw. Tradition isn’t a bad thing, but neither is innovation. Look at Cote, which fused the steakhouse with Korean barbecue — a combo so seamless it made everyone wonder what took so long. Now, the chef Sam Yoo, whose Golden Diner made him the Pancake King of Downtown, has introduced his “Korean American steakhouse.” It’s one of two places he’s opened near Rockefeller Center. There’s the street-level Golden HOF, a riff on the Korean pub, where you can post up under the hanok ceiling with local office workers who excitedly exclaim “Naengmyun martini?” The music pumps, the Korean-fried chicken wings are stupid crunchy, and the “Lychee-politan” is just what it sounds like. (Bar manager Sarah Ku’s menu has plenty more to like.) The steaks, meanwhile, are downstairs at NY Kimchi, named for the restaurant Yoo’s parents ran in this space. The lighting is dimmer and the music mellower (Mulatu Astatke’s “Tezeta”), but the food is flashy. Shrimp cocktail comes with a sweet and spicy chojang that gives cocktail sauce a run for its money. Crudos are seasoned à la classic Korean dishes, like scallop “bokkeum” with its gochugaru vinaigrette and lemon zest. A house salad with ginger–white miso dressing and japchae that’s smoky from the wok are nice primers for the meat. Some are chophouse style (a dry-aged T-bone), others KKBQ (galbi). All come with a spread of seven banchan, including three types of kimchee and anchovies with peanuts. L.A. lamb chops nod to Keen’s mutton chop but are prepared like L.A. kalbi and supercharged with perilla-soy dipping sauce. —Chris Crowley
Cactus Wren (Lower East Side)
Chefs Samuel Clonts and Raymond Trinh’s menu at this follow-up to 63 Clinton answers the question, What if a wine bar met a diner? Fried snacks like shrimp toast don’t veer too far into comfort food, nor do surprisingly sweet langoustine beignets. “Caviar service” takes the form of southwestern seven-layer bean dip (this is a good thing) served with fresh tortillas straight from a huge hearth near the entrance. The fruits de mer plate includes cooked oysters served with beef tallow and horseradish, while an extensive wine list skews lighter given the amount of shellfish served. Even still, it’s possible to end a meal here with pizza, if the mood strikes — topped with chicken liver mousse, at that. —Zach Schiffman
Danji (Hell’s Kitchen)
After the Koreassaince of the last few years, it can be easy to forget how relatively sparse the Korean-food landscape felt — at least outside of the usual K-towns — when Danji first opened in an unassuming little space on West 52nd Street in 2010. Chef Hooni Kim won the first Michelin star for a Korean restaurant anywhere, but that got lost in the shuffle a bit as new contenders followed, and in 2023, a fire in a neighboring building shut this restaurant’s doors for nearly two years. Now it’s back and, I’m happy to report, as good as ever. (In the restaurant-challenged Theater District, it’s as good a pre- or post-curtain meal as any I know.) Danji bills itself as “Korean tapas,” but despite a few flourishes borrowed from other cuisines — Kim’s pork-studded tteokbokki come topped with mascarpone — the chef is a classicist where it counts. “You ordered my favorite dish on the menu,” a hostess whispered to me about the giant iron cauldron of spicy soft-tofu stew, strewn with cod, shrimp, and big rings of squid. The clouds of tofu half-dissolve in the pungent, saline broth with the kind of layered depth of funk and flavor that tastes — in the best way — as if it had been cooking for all the time the restaurant was closed. Welcome back. —Matthew Schneier
Crevette (West Village)
Seeing “10 Downing” may trigger PTSD for the many restaurateurs who have tried, unsuccessfully, to build longstanding businesses inside this otherwise-seductive corner address. The latest to give it a go are the city’s best hope yet: Patricia Howard and Ed Szymanski, a power couple that has, in the early going, packed this dining room by doing all the little stuff right. A seafood-heavy menu offers a surprising amount of variety (a bowl of butter beans with grilled squid, skewers of octopus in harissa, a filet of halibut with fennel: all lovely). Service is warm and familiar but not overbearing. The room is full but not suffocating. The décor is “European coastal” but not Epcot-y. It’s all sort of quiet and it’s all quite nice. Any operator will tell you a restaurant lives or dies by its regulars; Crevette is a spot that it would feel like a gift to settle in over and over again. —Alan Sytsma
Passerine (Flatiron)
Although it opened in November, it wasn’t until mid-February that this restaurant introduced a $135 tasting menu. The seven-course sequence, which is also offered in a vegetarian version, has little overlap with the regular dinner menu and might be the best introduction to the boundless cooking of Chetan Shetty, who was most recently chef at Raina in D.C., and at Indian Accent prior to that. The meal kicks off with a tuile-thin tartlette of tuna tartare set with ginger gelée with a crunchy brunoise of red onion tamed by a scoop of kaluga caviar. Next comes a take on prosciutto and melon in which cantaloupe balls and dabs of saffron yogurt are hidden beneath petals of endive with a pour of green-apple broth. It’s followed by warm crab on a pile of snacky potato sticks sauced with a peppery foam, then cod in a creamy cilantro and tomatillo chutney. Breads appear at the end, with flaky paratha accompanying chicken in a creamy chile masala, topped with a mix of fried coriander, mustard, and anise seeds. Garlic-heavy naan arrives alongside a yielding piece of spiced short rib surrounded by a gentle and airy corn sauce. Dessert is chai ice cream buried in the middle of a salty roasted pistachio cream and covered with a heady rosewater ice: a fragrant and memorable final bite. —Tammie Teclemariam
More New Bars and Restaurants