Chinatown Brasserie

[eatingwitheddie]

Chinatown Brasserie is opening around June 1 and it is owned by Josh Pickard & John McDonald who also own Lever House and Lure Fishbar.

The idea of the restaurant is to serve very fresh, clean, delicious, carefully cooked traditional Chinese dishes that are driven by a food savvy and quality ingredient viewpoint. The restaurant will feature a very ambitious dim sum menu offering as many as 40 items daily as well as a full dinner menu wih close to 100 choices.

The executive chef, Tyson Ophaso, is Thai born, Troisgros trained, and ran the kitchen at La Cote Basque when he was 25 years old. His ethnicity is 75% Chinese however, and his cooking is largely traditional tasting Chinese, but with a Thai/sophisticated European chef's filter. Dishes may have more fresh chiles or herbs than traditionally encountered, or may be prepared with particularly good tasting Chinese-style soy sauce that is made in Thailand. While the menu has a few new-style, westernized and Thai dishes, it is primarily A-quality versions of straight-up Chinese cooking. It's about very good food.

Joe Ng, the exec dim sum chef, is the up and coming dim sum star in the US. In my opinion he is one of the top practioners of his craft in the world. He has 1000 dim sum items in his repetoire, but more importantly his cooking is delicious. About 15 dim sum items will be available at night as well as during the day.

The restaurant is big, about 400 seats, and it has a very large outdoor cafe as well as a hot downstairs lounge/dining room that features a koi pond (for looking not eating). It will be moderately priced compared to other hi-profile Asian restaurants that have opened recently in NYC, though it will cost more than your local take-out. Look for things that you'd not normally find in Chinese restaurants like fresh waterchestnuts, chanterelles, flatiron steak, great salads and awesome shrimp and snow pea leaf dumplings with translucent pale yellow skins that are tinted by yellow leek water. There will also be particularly good versions of Chinese-American classics like Beef & Snow Peas and General Tso's Chicken. There is even a riff on Chicken Chow Mein - it's topped with crispy vidalia onion bits and served in a little edible cup - and it's an appetizer.

Last Sunday, Chinatown Brasserie was the host for Bon Appetite's Chef's Night Out Party for The Beard Awards.

Along with the chefs and owners I have spent the last year developing the culinary program for Chinatown Brasserie and I am confident that after it gets its sea legs (takes some time for 40 chefs to work as a team) it will be one terrific place to eat.

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Thanks, Ed Schoenfeld

[Bond Girl]

I had limited impressions of Chinatown Brasserie from being in there at CNO. The place is huge, with state of the art bi level kitchens and private dining rooms. The decor is on the opulent side so it'll be interesting to see it in the heat of the summer. All the food sampled seemed very good and Tyson Ophaso is certainly a very competent chef. I will have more to report if I get invited to friends and family. But, for now it's one of the places I am excited about as it will give me nioce alternatives for sunday morning dim sum

[Pan]

Where is this place located?

[Daniel]

Wow.. Wow.. How exciting.. Look forward to hearing more about it..

[donbert]

Where is this place located?

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According to their website it's going to be at 380 Lafayette St (between 3rd and 4th).

[lambretta76]

This is the old Time Cafe space, no?

[Bond Girl]

This is the old Time Cafe space, no?

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Yes.

[Pan]

(Just FYI, 3rd St. is Great Jones St. at that point.)

[weinoo]

Chinatown Brasserie is opening around June 1 and it is owned by Josh Pickard & John McDonald who also own Lever House and Lure Fishbar.

Along with the chefs and owners I have spent the last year developing the culinary program for Chinatown Brasserie and I am confident that after it gets its sea legs (takes some time for 40 chefs to work as a team) it will be one terrific place to eat.

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Thanks, Ed Schoenfeld

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Really looking forward to the opening of Chinatown Brasserie, Ed. Can't wait for some of that great dim sum, and am looking forward to trying some of the classics.

Good luck!!

[ned]

The wife and I fell ass-backwards into friends and family night tonight at the Chinatown Brasserie. Standout items are a chili stuffed with shrimp, tempura-style, massaman curry beef, three chili chicken with peanuts, soup dumplings. The cocktails are pretty inventive--particularly one with gin and green tea.

The room is very fabulous. Large, lots of chinoiserierie. Staff was friendly and VERY generous. We're going to be back as soon as they open for real.

[Pan]

[...]Standout items are a chili stuffed with shrimp, tempura-style, massaman curry beef, three chili chicken with peanuts, soup dumplings. The cocktails are pretty inventive--particularly one with gin and green tea.[...]

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This reads to me like Pan Asian cuisine, but Ed described it upthread as mostly traditional. I'll look forward to checking out their menu.

[ned]

Last night's menu was apparently not a full one. We wondered about the place of curry in Chinese cuisine too. I don't have any idea if it's traditional. There are lots of traditional american -chinese restaurant standards--orange beef, the peanut chicken dish, some others that I can't remember at the moment. At the top of the drinks list is a pina colada and a mai tai. Very Trader Vic's. We had a pina colada and it was pretty damn delicious even if it wasn't served in a plastic coconut with a two foot straw and a giant fruit salad.

[Pan]

There is such a thing as a Hong Kong-style (or Cantonese) curry, but it's quite different from a Massaman (Thai or Thai-Malay Muslim) curry.

[weinoo]

I attended a private dinner Wednesday night and thought the food was mostly fabulous. To start with, all the dim sum we tried were great - I believe we had five varieties. We also had about five or six mains, every one of which will be available on the menu. The "traditional" Chinese dishes (at least the ones we're used to thinking of as traditional - for example, beef with broccoli) will be true to their identities, but better - using a double reduced stock, much less oil than normally used in stir-fries, and higher quality ingredients (e.g. beef) than most Chinese restaurants use. None of that gloppy white stuff that passes for sauce in about 99% of Chinese restaurants. The chef is informed by a background which includes working in some top kitchens, with some top chefs, in Europe - so expect to see different touches.... "thai style" beef salad using flatiron steak, for example.

I think the worrying about curry being Chinese is overdone - the restaurant is called Chinatown Brasserie, which to me means a brasserie located in or near Chinatown, not necessarily serving only chinese food.

The lounge downstairs looks like it's going to be a blast - an abbreviated menu and smaller plates should keep it hopping.

The room is big and fun - and as noted above, the two cocktails I tried were very well made - I tend to go for the less sweet stuff, and they did a great job on thse.

Staff was very friendly - remains to be seen how they'll react to a full house - evidently, if all goes well, the place can hold up to 400 people!

Good luck to all involved - I believe NY is in dire need of a place like this!

[Sneakeater]

the restaurant is called Chinatown Brasserie, which to me means a brasserie located in or near Chinatown, not necessarily serving only chinese food.

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Except that it ISN'T located in or near Chinatown.

[weinoo]

the restaurant is called Chinatown Brasserie, which to me means a brasserie located in or near Chinatown, not necessarily serving only chinese food.

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Except that it ISN'T located in or near Chinatown.

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That depends on what your definition of "near" is. Walk down Lafayette about 5 minutes and you're there.

[Sneakeater]

Let's be honest. Nobody in New York thinks of Noho as having anything to do with Chinatown. No one would open anything in Noho called "Chinatown" because they think it refers to its location.

Edited May 19, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[tommy]

Let's be honest.  Nobody in New York thinks of Noho as having anything to do with Chinatown.  No one would open anything in Noho called "Chinatown" because they think it refers to its location.

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we can be relatively sure that the name of the place refers to "chinatown", however.

Edited May 19, 2006 by tommy (log)

[eatingwitheddie]

"Reads to me like Pan Asian cuisine, but Ed described it upthread as mostly traditional. I'll look forward to checking out their menu."

DON'T CHECK OUT THE MENU, CHECK OUT THE FOOD!

The emphasis at chinatown brasserie is on having delicious, interesting and cleanly-cooked dishes, that are prepared with classic Chinese techniques. However the head chef, Tyson Ophaso, is ethnically 75% Chinese and 25% Thai and is a native of Bangkok. What's more he was a protege of Pierre Troisgros (5 years in Roanne), worked in a number of heavy duty French restaurants (L'ami Louis, Le Cirque, Lutece,) and started running the kitchen at La Cote Basque at the age of 25.

He is using all parts of his background at Chinatown Brasserie to produce exciting food. There are a few Thai dishes, and a number of Chinese ones that have a slightly Thai point of view and many more that are simply extremely well executed versions of popular classics. And if you know enough about cooking I'm sure you could identify some serious French technique as well. There are even a few 'new style' items. Calling it pan-Asian though would be mis-labeling it. While Chinatown Brasserie is firmly grounded in Chinese cuisine and technique, it feels no need to be slavishly devoted to it. It's just devoted to 'good' and to pleasing its audience.

This restaurant is not about absolutely authentic, especially when it is at the expense of sensible cooking. For example go to NYC Chinatown and get seafood pan-fried noodles. 'Authentic' is likely to deliver you frozen (and usually tasteless) scallops, shrimp and squid in a pasty white sauce over noodles. We on the other hand are starting with good stock, reducing and flavoring it with hi-end Spanish sherry, and then adding fresh scallops, and high quality shrimp. At the last minute we're poaching a dozen Prince Edward Island Mussels in the sauce and letting their juice add intensity and depth of flavor. Finally we're throwing in a big handful of herbacious Thai basil and a few slices of fresh chili, and then pouring the whole thing over a crispy noodle cake. To me this is good cooking applied to an excellent Chinese idea that is typically made poorly. Does the addition of Thai basil and fresh chile make it less Chinese? Well in a provincial sense absolutely, in a good eating sense it is just setting the bar higher and leading the pack. Chinese chefs are discovering the rest of the world and incorporating it into their repetoire. In Beijing last year the hot spice was saffron. Saw it all over. It was being featured at my favorite Peking Duck restaurant there. Is it Chinese? Who cares! It was delicious and it worked and it didn't taste like Spanish cooking. And yes, we have a saffron item on the menu: Scallops with Saffron and Cellophane Noodles in a casserole.

While Chinatown Brasserie won't be serving much of the esoterica one might find in Chinatown, hopefully it will develop a reputation for the place to go to if you're looking for hi-quality ingredients, that are smartly prepared into comfortable, delicious, thoughtful meals. Not to mention that Joe Ng, the dim sum chef, probably makes the best chicken feet of a lifetime, and some of the best dim sum and mandarin pancakes you're likey to come across anywhere. Recently spent two weeks in Macao and Hong Kong. Most days I ate with friends from the Hong Kong Tourist Association whose job it is to host visiting chefs and foodies. Ate dim sum everyday, at the reputedly best places in town, and to my mind at only one place was the dim sum the same quality as Joe's, and there it was different, not better.

Chinatown Brasserie is quite large and accordingly has a very large kitchen staff. Even though the menu contains prosaic items like orange beef and very few things like duck blood or kidneys, it is extremely ambitious in its way. It will take time for the kitchen to hit its stride since there are a number of twists and turns for the chefs to learn, but once it gets its sea legs I'm confident that this will be a place to go if you are seeking genuinely good food made from really good ingredients, prepared with care and skill. May not be the weirdest or the wildest, though it might just be some of the best.

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Edited May 22, 2006 by eatingwitheddie (log)

[magic168]

Hmmm, you've intrigued me. I'm planning out my trip for my parent's 30th anniversary, and we might pay a visit to your new place. Do eGulleters get special treatment?

Edited May 22, 2006 by magic168 (log)

[lambretta76]

So is it open to the public during its "soft open"? Does anyone have a menu?

[Sneakeater]

I, for one, tried to make a reservation for Saturday night and was told I couldn't until next week.

(Of course, I can't reservations for two at Yakitori Totto, either.)

[magic168]

I, for one, tried to make a reservation for Saturday night and was told I couldn't until next week.

(Of course, I can't reservations for two at Yakitori Totto, either.)

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Can't wait to hear your thoughts. I wish there was some way we could see the menu.

[eatingwitheddie]

I, for one, tried to make a reservation for Saturday night and was told I couldn't until next week.

(Of course, I can't reservations for two at Yakitori Totto, either.)

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Can't wait to hear your thoughts. I wish there was some way we could see the menu.

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Chinatown Brasserie will open June 1 for dinner

[chefboy24]

what do you mean ran the kitchen?

he was chef de cuisine?

one of several sous chefs?

Edited May 30, 2006 by chefboy24 (log)