Grub Street

The sun is setting, shrouding the Lower East Side in a soft evening light, but the hair and nail salon directly above Mission Chinese Food casts an unflattering glow across the stretch of pavement where a gaggle of would-be diners bides their time. As usual, the wait is over two hours. Among the crowd outside 154 Orchard Street is a pair of middle-aged guys in loafers, hemmed jeans, and pressed button-downs who are leaning on a Cadillac Escalade like they own it. But most patrons are younger and have come here on foot, with time if not money to burn. Perched on a planter that provides the only seating is a fellow with a cotton kimono, complicated piercings, and a leg cast—the result, one feels safe assuming, of a fixed-gear bicycle incident. A young couple strolls up and stares quizzically at Mission’s forbidding exterior, a plate-glass window stenciled with some untranslated Chinese characters. “I thought it was, like, a restaurant,” the guy says to the girl. He’s not the first to be confused. The face Mission presents to the street is not that of the hot spot it is, but rather one of an iffy purveyor of spare ribs and duck sauce.

Like David Chang, Gabe Stulman, and a host of other successful, much-buzzed-about restaurateurs in this bare-bones, downsized, remorselessly utilitarian dining era, Gabe Thompson and his partner, Joe Campanale, have mastered the art of the tiny room. At their first venture in the West Village, dell’anima, the pair managed to fit two dining counters, an open kitchen, several intimate, candlelit stand-up bar tables, and an excellent wine collection into a space only a little larger than a good-size barn stall. Their popular bar on Eighth Avenue, Anfora, is only slightly more spacious than that, as is their other hit Italian restaurant, L’Artusi, on West 10th Street, which is appointed with a polished white-marble bar, rows of orange-and-white-striped banquettes, and a painted, gently curved ceiling that makes the windowless room feel, on crowded evenings, like you’re dining in the belly of a tastefully decorated submarine.

In the eighteen years since Masaharu Morimoto was hired to head the kitchen at Nobu, the Iron Chef has gone on to open eight restaurants of his own around the world. The ninth, Tribeca Canvas, marks his return to the old neighborhood, where fans will be surprised to discover a menu devoid of sushi and sashimi. Instead, the so-called bistro is devoted to Morimoto’s globally accented riff on Western comfort food, served nightly until 4 a.m. His newfangled fusion is exemplified in shrimp nachos with guacamole, ranch dressing, and gochujang aïoli; braised pork ribs with fried-rice risotto—even chicken pot pie. As for the name: Designer Thomas Schoos hand-painted trees on the canvases draped around the room, and his woodsy vision extends to light fixtures fashioned from Indonesian vines.

During its six-month run, Frej was an unlikely phenomenon: a seventeen-seat New Nordic pop-up serving a $45 tasting menu Monday through Wednesday in a Williamsburg design studio. Aska, its newly expanded replacement, has gained two extra nights of service (Sunday and Thursday), an additional twelve-seat dining room, and a new partner, general manager Eamon Rockey, whose cocktails share a Scandinavian-inspired, herbal sensibility with chef Fredrik Berselius’s cuisine. The prix fixe menu, now $65 for six to eight small-plate courses, integrates plants like yarrow, lichen, and seaweed, focusing on vegetables and often treating protein as a garnish. As in his native Sweden, Berselius plans to extend the season by preserving: “We ferment, we pickle, we cure, and we smoke,” says the chef, who also bakes his own bread and sours his own cream. Daytime café and nighttime bar-food menus are forthcoming.