There’s a new Korean restaurant highlighting the wonders of kimchi coming to New York next month. The co-owners of and couple behind Korean French restaurant Soogil — chef Soogil Lim and Saook Youn — are opening Raon at 207 E. 59th Street, near Third Avenue in Lennox Hill starting on Tuesday, March 4, with reservations available to be booked on Resy starting on Tuesday, February 18.
Roan’s goal is to showcase the full breadth of the fermented dish through kimchi pairings. “For Koreans, kimchi is 101,” Lim writes to Eater over email. “It is the foundation of our cuisine and culture,” noting that “it is more than just a side dish.”
The tasting menu’s kimchi approach is akin to how wines are paired with dishes. There’s the well-known options like baechu (napa cabbage kimchi), and then the less-prevalent ones like bo kimchi (wrapped kimchi). The chefs match those with dishes such as the king crab and the oi kimchi salad (made with cucumbers); tuna and caviar with baek (mild white kimchi) kimchi; and foie gras mandu with mukeunji kimchi (napa cabbage that is fermented for a longer time).
The high-end, 14-counter-seat restaurant is a pricy one — $255 for 10 courses. There are beverage pairings available for $195. Expect soju, cocktails, wines, and beers, with eventual additions of sake and whiskies.
Chinese dumpling chain makes its way into the East Village
Ginormous China-based restaurant chain all about dumplings is going to open in Manhattan, as reported by EV Grieve. Dumpling Xi will be found at 80 Fourth Avenue at 10th Street. The restaurant serves up made-to-order boiled dumplings served in a casual setting. This is New York’s second location, after the one in Flushing, per a reader of the blog. There are over 700 stores in China. This neighborhood has plentiful dumpling spots too, from Tim Ho Wan to Mimi Cheng’s to Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings.
Ugly Baby’s replacement restaurant serves a very spicy Thai dish
Former Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema reviewed Ugly Baby’s recently opened replacement Thai restaurant Hungry Thirsty this week in his newsletter. Sietsema was a fan of Hungry’s predecessor, calling Ugly Baby “one of the most exciting Thai restaurants to hit town in a long time” in 2017. This new restaurant — run by former Ugly staffers — serves a somewhat similar food menu with some updates and new dishes (which he calls “edgy but delicious”). He was most taken by the very spicy khang koong, which he describes as “a morass of jumbo shrimp and maitake mushrooms in a dense brown sauce with a wonderfully fishy and gritty quality” that “quickly climb to intolerable levels.”
