12/18/2022 0 Comments Lingr el five ophilias restaurant![]() ![]() “I don’t think I’ll ever open another brick-n-mortar. For Cucci, this is where he sees his future. It has to be about how you work in your community. Rather, being local can’t just be about commodities. “It’s not enough to just point to five things on your plate and say you’re local,” he said. It’s a vital part of what it means to be a local restaurant. To Cucci, this is not just an environmental choice. ![]() In fact, they won’t even have soda guns behind the bar and hope to make any in-house sodas with leftover food scraps. But by selecting certain types of drinks, including a kegged cocktail that doesn’t require additional chilling, they hope to reduce their water waste. Bartenders are also working to use less water, which according to Belk is like telling chefs to use their stoves less. In fact, the bar is made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper - called PaperStone. Rather, the bar is where a lot of the green initiatives take hold in the restaurant. The light-hearted nature of the drinks doesn’t mean there’s not intent behind them. There’s even a Porron ($12) - a vessel where you actually pour a drink from the glass into a friend’s mouth - made from a Shady of Ratio Beerworks “Dear You” saison and lemon soda. Cocktails include The Zombie ($15), a smoking tiki drink named in homage to the Corpse Reviver cocktail at Linger. Other than that, the cocktails are where El Five flexes its eccentric attitude. The cocktail program has remnants of the same intentions including making its own sweet vermouth, which according to Bar Manager Ky Belk is a staple for Spanish liquor cabinets. Much like the food, they represent the melding of Middle Eastern and European cultures. I keep thinking of using thousands of the old radio tubes, and lighting some of them so it feels like you’re under a tapestry of stars,” he said in reference to the final touches of El Five.īut despite his tendency to impulse buy on an Olympic level, most of what Cucci puts in his restaurant serves a specific purpose. “I have a lot of shit… I have radio tubes I bought three years before Ophelia’s. Cucci is notorious for this - buying random objects in bulk long before he knows what he’s going to do with them. He probably has hundreds if not thousands,” explained Cucci of the man who sold him the posters via Ebay. This time, instead of the remnants of an old mortuary, it’s vintage Egyptian movie posters from the ’50s and ’60s. And like usual, he achieves this by mixing all the trappings of a luxe modern restaurant with a spattering of found objects. It has the same alluring decor that exudes a sensual, albeit eccentric, mid-mod aesthetic. House-cured salmon will be featured heavily and may appear on a sandwich with pickled shallots and fresh herbs, while a char sui-marinated protein could show up on a milk bread sandwich with homemade XO sauce.But elevation and symbolism aside, the Mediterranean tapas bar is in some ways parallel to Linger. Though dishes are still being finalized, the breakfast menu features coffee drinks and plates that fuse Chinese and Norwegian morning staples like homemade pastries, rice noodle rolls, aebleskivers (puffy pancake balls), a breakfast sandwich with egg foo young served on milk bread, sticky cardamom buns, almond buns and a dim sum-like play on egg custard tarts.įor lunch, guests can expect an assortment of salads and Norwegian-inspired open-faced sandwiches served on everything from scallion pancakes to rye, sourdough and milk bread. The restaurant’s name references an Old Norse word meaning both “belonging to” and “descending from.” Īs far as the food is concerned, Jew says he has stayed more or less close to his original vision: a breakfast, lunch and dinner restaurant inspired by his Chinese and Norwegian heritage. Chef and owner Jeffrey Jew looked to his Norwegian and Chinese heritage when designing his new restaurant, which opens next month at 400 Sixth St. ![]()
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