going asian Hakubai Just steps down from the Kitano Hotel lobby on Park Avenue is a traditional Japanese restaurant called Hakubai, which means “white plum.” Ikebana flower arrangements provide the only adornment to the simple elegance of a space defined with shoji screens and a wait staff in traditional kimono and obi. In addition to the main dining room of this Michelin-rated restaurant (strangely absent in Zagat) there are three private tatami rooms for as few as four guests or as many as 16. Chef Yukihiro Sato specializes in Kaiseki, a distinctive cuisine with roots in Zen Buddhism and the Japanese tea ceremony. Most popular is the $90 Okonomi Kaiseki, a tasting menu that includes sashimi, various delicacies, grilled food, miso soup, and dessert. A main course of Kobe beef shabu-shabu is cooked at your table. If you are watching your calories and your health, you may enjoy something new this season, the Kenbi menu for lunch or dinner. Three courses of tasty foods add up to fewer than 500 calories. Kenbi begins with a bento box with small porcelain dishes of things like marinated asparagus in sesame seed paste, jellyfish and cucumber marinated in ginger vinegar, simmered vegetable broth, and carrot soy milk tofu (soft and sweet). Next is a flavorful turnip broth with crab meat; then tuna sashimi and fresh soy milk skin, with some wasabi. Finally, a soba noodle salad with organic veggies and a tangy dressing.
Asiate
NYC
Kenbi lunch is $39 and dinner $55, a portion of which is donated to Table for Two, a charity providing meals for African schoolchildren. Location Park Ave at 38th Street • 212-885-7111 • kitano.com
This romantic restaurant is on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Columbus Circle. Come here for dinner with someone special, wear your best duds and ask for the corner table where you can watch over Central Park and the night skyline through floor-toceiling glass. (Asiate received top marks for décor from Zagat for the past two years.) The occasion may call for champagne, but with this elegant Asianinspired international cuisine, why not try a fine sparkling sake or perhaps a Mandarin Sunset cocktail of vodka, blood orange, lychee juice and Lillet Blanc? Dinner is a three-course prix fixe. For starters, try Chef Brandon Kida’s raw taste sensations lined up in porcelain teaspoons, which may include sea urchin, oyster, tuna, and a cube of sea bass in a grapefruit gelee. Buckwheat and eggs, a signature dish of soba noodles with osetra caviar from Oregon and a wasabi cream, is elegant and sumptuous. A butternut soup is poured at the table over a small mound of spaghetti squash and is accented with a small baked Parmesan crisp. A main course such as sea bass on a bed of baby vegetables and sprouts comes with a zesty emulsion of sudachi, a lemon cousin. A tender and succulent buffalo tenderloin is served with cheese polenta and a spicy plum mole sauce, a tangy diversion from the traditional Mexican mole of chocolate and chili.
NYC
Prix fixe dinner is $85 or $125; more if you include a wine pairing (from an exceptional list). The lunch prix fixe is a bargain at $24. Location Mandarin Oriental at Columbus Circle • 212-805-8800 mandarinoriental.com/newyrok/dining/asiate
090-93 DiningFeature.indd 93
93
11/8/10 7:48:39 PM