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“D'Or Ahn: THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Asian	Chelsea	Moderate	Great

ived of a place that would bring the flavors of Korea's Palace cuisine—an elegant style of cooking developed by the chefs of the royal families in the 17th and 18th centuries—together with European technique. To bring her vision to life, she hired Rachel Yang, a young, fresh-faced Korean-American woman who over the past five years has cooked at Ducasse, Daniel, and Per Se. Not a bad trifecta. While Yang was schooled in the details of Korean Palace cuisine by Ahn's Aunt, her exquisite approach to food—technique, seasoning, touch, plating—is clearly a product of her impressive pedigree.

Her menu offers a selection of raw, cold, and hot small plates to start and a selection of mains and sides. It is problematic only in that everything sounds great and you'll have a hard time figuring out what not to order.

While working through what we would eliminate, Susie mentioned she was not interested in the veal feet, but when cubes of crispy fried something or other came out to the table as amuse bouche, she had this to say: "Yum-A-Rama." Turns out, Susie does like veal feet. (Fried and crispy veal feet, that is.) And so did I.

We decided on a few raw fish dishes to start. A carpaccio of fluke ($12) was served on a long amber glass plate that made the pearly fish shimmer, as if lit by a glowing fire from underneath. The fluke slivers were marinated and topped with kelp—a sort of chewy seaweed that was a nice textural counterpoint to the silky fish. We also had a fun and fat toro tuna roll, filled with creamy diced toro and white kimchi wrapped up as maki ($8). Octopus ($12) will taste familiar to fans of Korean food. It's got that sweet, hot, spicy, pungent Korean flavor festival happening. Slices of tender octopus are tossed with grapes, slivered peppers and red onion in a sweet chili sauce. I loved Ms. Yang's version of bibimbob ($8)—a long rectangle of sticky rice topped with a hot and runny egg yolk, and a mound of sautéed mushrooms swiped with red chile sauce and drizzled with black sesame dressing. You might order two of these. I also loved the Kimchi pizza ($8), which many of you are probably making faces at right now. I encourage you to try it. It's like a spicy pizza—a super thin buttery crust gets topped with spicy-as-all-get-out kimchi, under a gratin-like layer of pecorino romano and a dusting of ground pine nuts. It's better than it sounds.

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Posted: December 4, 2005

Other restaurants in Chelsea :
+ Matsuri   + La Bottega   + Tia Pol   + Bombay Talkie   + Cookshop   + D'Or Ahn: THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED   + Buddakan   + Crema   + InTent: THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED   + Trestle on Tenth   + Klee   + El Quinto Pino   + Socarrat   + Txikito   + Co. (Company)   

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