What’s that they are saying — historical past repeats, first as tragedy, then as forks? More true phrases by no means misquoted. New York neighborhoods aren’t born a lot as they’re reborn on the ashes of their predecessors, and dirty areas of avoidance turn out to be the location of the brand new sizzling boîte. Your Meatpacking Districts, your Tribecas — all of them inform the story. Now it’s far-western Soho’s flip.
These streets had been as soon as stand-ins for the worst New York needed to provide. In Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, the leather-based bar Griffin Dunne stumbles into on his lengthy night time’s journey into day is the outdated Emerald Pub at 308 Spring Road, and a reasonably bartender performed by Teri Garr lives throughout the road at 307.
I, too, stumbled into 307 Spring lately. The flats have sailed out of barmaid territory, and the bottom ground is house to a sprightly restaurant referred to as Kiko, which packs within the neighborhood’s new denizens for after-work shiso-litchi highballs and lobster crispy rice. The restaurant, which opened in November 2024, is an early arrival to what appears to be like to be New York’s latest fine-dining neighborhood. Flynn McGarry’s Cove simply opened on West Houston, and Daniel Humm has signed a lease a little bit methods north at 435 Hudson. César Ramirez, one other early adopter, opened his $400-a-head tasting-menu den final yr.
Growth bulldozes the very best of us. So long as the world stalwarts — the blessed Ear Inn, chef Ned Baldwin’s ever-reliable Houseman — stay, a couple of new arrivals comparable to Kiko received’t be unwelcome. The hundreds of workplace staff peopling Google’s St. John’s Terminal campus and Disney’s blocklong Robert A. Iger Constructing, each of which opened in 2024, have to go someplace, and Kiko, greater than lots of its tonier neighbors, is accessible for the form of few-bites, few-drinks socializing that occurs in enterprise districts. You can also make a full dinner right here, simply, however you can even slug a couple of oysters or a tuna tartare and be carried out.
Clockwise from top-left: Getting into on Spring Road, lobster crispy rice, certainly one of three eating areas, striploin. Hugo Yu.
Clockwise from top-left: Getting into on Spring Road, lobster crispy rice, certainly one of three eating areas, striploin. Hugo Yu.
After what appeared like a gradual begin, Kiko is now buzzing. The restaurant comes from the husband-and-wife chef-and-sommelier workforce of Alex Chang and Lina Goujjane. Chang has the requisite stints at worldwide sizzling spots (L.A.’s Animal, Mexico Metropolis’s Pujol); Goujjane comes from a restaurant household (house owners of One If By Land, Two If By Sea for many years). All of that have has filtered into the nice and cozy, romantic eating room, a bit ryokan-chalet, with bare-wood accents and a crackling hearth. The menu can skew formidable and a spotlight grabbing ($46 Dungeness crab with crab-fat mayo) when desired and approachable (deep-fried rooster wings) when not.
I don’t flip up my nostril at wings and definitely not at Chang’s, that are as stickily and sweetly fried as any you’ll discover in Koreatown. Candied in a blanket of ginger and yuzu kosho and fried I don’t need to know what number of instances, they’re a vivid, Ninja Turtle inexperienced, because of an ample dusting of makrut-lime-leaf powder.
That’s to not counsel that Kiko is a new-look Hooters. Although the menu caroms a little bit extensively for my style — Italianate mafaldine with mushrooms, even with the twist of fermented black beans, didn’t make a lot sense — there’s clearly sophistication and tact exercised right here. (It’s been some time since I’ve been to a Hooters, however I don’t recollect it making its personal gently wobbling silken tofu.) It’s extra that Chang flexes his finesse in ways in which don’t insist upon consideration being paid. Thai-style crimson curry poured over a little bit hillock of calmly fried lobster crispy rice is lots flavorful, however it doesn’t demand reverence; you don’t even have to pause your dialog. I spied a whole-fried black bass sitting up and staring the 2 ladies who ordered it useless within the face. They continued chatting merrily.
The ascetics can skip the bass in favor of a butterflied sea bream, however why, when there are slices of pork secreto (the minimize of the second, judging by how typically I see it on restaurant menus) marinated till tender in coconut and served alongside a couple of chunks of spicy pineapple, the uncommon entrée that conjures each Hawaiian pizza and a piña colada?
Enjoyment with a soupçon of serious-ness: That’s what Kiko is nice for. Generally you simply have to attend and the second catches up. A yr in the past, Kiko was a swing, then it turned a discovery. The neighborhood is effervescent up round it now. Its hour is right here.
Scratchpad
Kiko
Select a Vibe
Of the three adjoining rooms, the entrance bar is the liveliest, the again room greatest for bigger teams, and the center a pleasant compromise between the 2.
Wine That’s Price It
There are severe bottles on Goujjane’s listing (together with an honest variety of sakes), however it was no nice sacrifice to remain proper across the $100 mark.
Some Historical past
Outdated Tribeca heads will keep in mind the area as Giorgione, owned by Giorgio DeLuca (of Dean & DeLuca) and an early launching pad for By way of Carota’s Jody Williams.
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In case you choose to learn in print, you can even discover this text within the November 3, 2025, difficulty of
New York Journal.
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