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At Ladyhawk in West Hollywood, Calif., the first restaurant by Top Chef Middle East & North Africa winner Charbel Hayek, the chef is now offering this dish which helped him win the TV competition. He tosses raw ahi tuna with charred cucumber, avocado, chives, Maldon salt and a citrus vinaigrette and tops it with a gel made by combining orange, lime, and lemon juices with orange blossom and honey (along with gelatin). He finishes it with Aleppo pepper oil and garnishes it with shaved watermelon radish.
Price: $25
For this dish at the recently reopened Riverpark in the New York City neighborhood of Kips Bay, executive chef German Villatoro and chef de cuisine Kishen Jagmohan developed this side dish for which lentils are stewed with carrot, onion, celery, and ginger and then topped with a shawarma spice blend of paprika, salt, garlic, turmeric, coriander, allspice, and black pepper. Then they’re finished with coconut milk and spinach.
Separately, acorn squash is steamed plain and then seasoned with salt and the shawarma spices. Once those spices “soak in,” the squash is fried to bring out the spices’ flavor and give the squash a crunchy texture. That’s mixed with rice cauliflower that has been cooked with dried apricot, scallion, parsley, salt, and lemon. Finally it’s finished with mint, parsley, cilantro, and preserved lemon zest
Price: $32
For this new cocktail at Son Cubano in West New York, N.J., mixologist Byron Raudales draws inspiration from two other cocktails: The French 75 and the Mojito.
He combines 1.5 ounces of spiced dark rum with an ounce of guava purée, ¾ ounce of mint syrup, ½ ounce of lime juice and four dashes of aromatic bitters, shakes them with ice for seven seconds, strains it into a coupe glass garnished with a dehydrated lime wheel, tops it with brut Champagne and then adds six drops of mint oil.
Price: $17
For this item on the new menu at Restaurant Yuu in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Greenpoint, executive chef and owner Yuu Shimano chars eggplant, peels it. And dices it finely along with shallots, pine nuts, chives, and capers. He mixes that with diced wagyu beef and raw oysters along with a little Dijon mustard, red miso, Tabasco sauce, and salt.
He makes a sauce by blending a puree of cauliflower cooked in milk with raw oysters, heavy cream and milk.
He plates the tartare in an oyster shell, tops it with the sauce, finishes it with parsley oil (made by blending parsley with warmed grapeseed oil), and garnishes it with sunchoke chips.
Price: Part of the $250 15-course tasting menu
Georgie in Dallas, near Highland Park, has a new chef, R.J. Yoakum, having parted ways with celebrity chef Curtis Stone, and the new chef is offering this variation on French onion soup.
He starts with a dark poultry stock made from roasted duck and chicken bones as well as caramelized onions, plus some tamari, thyme, rosemary, and cheese rinds, and clarifies that into a consommé. Typically that would be topped with a Gruyère cheese laden toasted baguette, but instead he makes a sandwich of three slices of bread and an onion-and-cheese custard. At the bottom of the bowl is a Gruyère foam that he caramelizes with a blowtorch and then pours the stock over it at tableside.
Price: $20
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