Bridge & tunnel

Restaurant Yuu, new-wave Korean, a backyard oven, Conde Nast, more

Jul 11, 2023

∙ Paid

RESTAURANTS • The Nines

Korean, new-wave

Jungsik* (Tribeca), haute French-Korean tasting menu with uni, truffles, foie et al, $295 tasting + a la carte bar menu
Oiji Mi (Flatiron), from the OG honey butter chips team, $145 tasting + a la carte bar menu
bōm (Flatiron), steak-centered menu in stunning space, $325 tasting
Jua (Flatiron), exceptional wood-fired cooking, $135 tasting
Atomix (Nomad), top NYC resto on World’s 50 Best list (no. 8), $395 counter tasting, $270 bar tasting
Moono (Koreatown), new casual sophomore effort from Jua team (get the uni rice), a la carte
NARO (Rock Center), Atomix team dives into Korean classics, $165 tasting + a la carte bar menu
Anto** (Midtown), grownup Korean steakhouse with deep wine list, $110 tasting + a la carte (coverage)
Meju (Long Island City), 8-seat counter specializing in fermentation, $185 tasting (coverage)

*Closed for renovations until 7/25. **Closed for maintenance until 7/18. Hit reply or email found@foundny.com with additions and subtractions.

RESTAURANTS • First Word

Restaurant Yuu brings polish to Greenpoint

The Skinny: Six weeks in, chef Yuu Shimano and team are quietly delivering some of the most impressive, technique-driven French fare in the city in the form of an 18-course, $250 omakase that highlights pristine Japanese ingredients.

The Vibe: In a word: polished (in Greenpoint!), from the featherweight glassware to the gleaming open kitchen to the precise, à la minute cooking.

The Food: Shimano (formerly of Guy Savoy in Paris, Mifune in NYC) imbues refined French cuisine with Japanese ingredients and ethos: custardy vichyssoise crowned with Hokkaido uni; crispy fried baby ayu (sweetfish) bundled in spring roll skin and served alongside a bonito liver and egg yolk sauce; the signature duck, foie gras, and seasonal mushroom en croute.

A perfectly timed nectarine soufflé would have been enough dessert to win the night. But first, peak-season Yubari melon foam spooned over vanilla ice cream, white Port jelly, and a Pernod and melon ice (above).

The Verdict: Paris three-Michelin-star-level cooking in North Brooklyn. –Kat Odell

→ Restaurant Yuu (Greenpoint) • 55 Nassau Ave. • Book on Tock.

DINING UPDATES:

→ Per Se (Columbus Circle) will close for renovations on July 30, with original designer Adam Tihany back at it, per FloFab. Expected reopening is late September.

→ Eleven Madison Home — the pantry delivery offshoot of Eleven Madison Park — is teaming up with Farm to People (among FOUND’s haute provisioning Nines) on a summer cookout on Friday night in Bushwick. Lots of worlds colliding and turning upside down. Tickets are $125 and include “a feast of summer paella, salads, plant-based classics from the grill, and a selection of sweet treats.”

→ Friday is also Bastille Day, which means can can dancers and charcuterie at Daniel Boulud’s Le Gratin in Fidi. Tickets are $75 and include hors d’oeuvres and two glasses of wine. Or, just take the F to Smith Street.

NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: Have reservation apps forever changed NYC’s bar culture? • Yes, the new I Sodi is still very good • Nobu coming to the Upper East Side – in 2026 • Russ and Daughters ‘very close’ to opening new Hudson Yards location • Cobble Hill’s Poppy eyes expanding to old Cranberry’s space in Bk Heights • Cote planning outpost in Singapore • It’s private chef season in the Hamptons.

GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Object

Heat wave

I love the Gozney Dome for backyard summer cooking. I use it for everything — pizza, fish, steak, veggies. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment. –Sean Feeney

→ Shop: Dome, Gozney, $1999

GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Fancy skiwear maker Bogner plans Upper East Side flagship • Maje, Sandro latest luxury brands to sign leases in MePa • Golden Goose bets in-store cobblers will appeal to sneakerheads • Trinity Boxing Club opening in Tribeca again • A guide to the best furniture stores on Madison Ave. • Why jeans and ‘casual couture’ are the hallmark of the fashion season in Paris.

WORK • Transportation Report

Tunnel of love (reprise)

In 2010, then-N.J. Governor Chris Christie killed a project to build a tunnel under the Hudson River. It was a shocking turn on the long road to commuter bliss. The money was in, including $3 billion from the federal government, the most ever for a public transit project. And the upgrades were badly needed, as any New Jersey Transit or Amtrak rider who has endured the maddening, creaking, crawl into Manhattan can attest.

Thirteen years of crumbling infrastructure later comes funding, finally, for another massive effort to build a new tunnel. The $6.9 billion in federal grants for the Gateway tunnel (again, the largest ever!) was approved last week. Digging is expected to begin next year, with a 2035 target completion date — just in time (maybe) to skirt the disastrous possibility of one of the two existing tunnels failing.

By then, analysts forecast a return in ridership to pre-COVID norms. Today, with RTO levels inching toward 50% of those 2020 numbers, that’s hard to imagine. But big infrastructure projects require imagination in excess. And Manhattan is an island. Let the boring commence.

NYC WORK LINKS: Canyon of Zeroes: Lower Manhattan office rental market suffering like no other • Terminal Stores building in West Chelsea is a big RTO bet • These local publicly traded companies pay their employees the most • Inside NYC’s first cannabis coworking space • The pros and cons of taking a ‘workcation’.

WORK • Tuesday Routine

‘The Conde Nast Cafeteria is pretty lit’

NATE FREEMAN, art columnist, Vanity Fair
Neighborhood you work in: Tribeca

It’s Tuesday morning, where are you working?
I often work from home for an hour and hang out with Lady, our one-year-old daughter. She's adorable, but less adorable is that other reality of Tuesdays in the East Village: the dreaded alternate side parking ballet dance. And if the car's parked on the Tuesday side, I'm taking Zooms in a car with a dog in the background. Once that's all done, I roll into the office at 1 World Trade Center around 11:00am.

What’s the Tuesday morning scene at your workplace?
Tuesday is the VF all-staff ideas meeting so even the contributors who work from home come in to warm their seats and barter for gossip. There's usually a guest star in town from LA or Europe, and the pitches come fully formed, ready for the rest of the staff to opine and pounce and add on. It's pretty electric.

What’s on the agenda for today?
Calls with sources, meetings with editors, VF team meetings, phones-down writing sessions in the morning and the afternoon. After clocking out sometimes I'll meet up with the art advisor Benjamin Godsill to record an episode of our art world podcast Nota Bene. I'll probably follow that with cocktails with sources at Nine Orchard (Dimes Square). An then, ideally, home before Lady's asleep for the night.

What’s for lunch?
Honestly, the Conde Nast Cafeteria is pretty lit — it might not be designed by Frank Gehry like the old caf at 4 Times Square, but stroll through and you'll see Remnick at his daily lunch powwow with a New Yorker staff writer at one table, a stylish clique of Vogue writers at another, and around the way a GQ gang munching down and talking about, I dunno, trips to Pitti I guess. That being said, ideally I'm going off-campus and getting lunch with a source at The Odeon (Tribeca), and ordering the baby kale Caesar Salad with the chicken Paillard added, washed down with a crisp Diet Coke.

Any plans tonight?
Usually around this time of year I'd be going extremely hard on fondue in a quaint medieval town in Switzerland after running through endless halls of Art Basel, the world's most prestigious painting expo. But I skipped the fair this year, so I'm in New York, doing the next best thing: attending the Chanel Artist Dinner at Balthazar (Soho), still the greatest restaurant in the world's greatest city. Can't complain.

ASK FOUND

First, a quick reminder on how this works: You send us the pressing questions of the day (on dining, services, living in NYC and surrounds). We all put our heads together (us, FOUND, + you, FOUND subscribers, who are also FOUND) in a search for truth and beauty. Please do not be shy — hit reply or or email found@foundny.com.

PROMPTS, two new, one for which we continue to seek more intel:

I’m doing some work at [redacted] which is right around the corner from the NYSE and having an after-work drink with my boss next week. Any suggestions for the ‘perfect neighborhood cocktail bar’ in Fidi?
I'm looking for a good vintage poster, but don't know where to start. I don't want the same old Ellsworth Kelly/Leo Castelli posters everyone else owns, but I'm also not looking to overinvest in art as much as cover some walls. What've you got?
What are the best/coolest coworking spaces? There are so many to choose from.

RESPONSES, from our correspondents and subscribers:

Q: I’m a home pour-over obsessive and want to up my game. Who’s selling the best beans in New York right now?

A: Three responses (with more on this to follow). So far we’ve got: