Where Colin Ate: Sunn’s, Nishaan, Chada, Los Burritos Juarez
Plus: a Korean-style family meal
Colin Camac (aka @resyguynyc) is officially Blackbird’s “Strategic Sales Lead,” and unofficially is our resident insider’s insider. He is out, on the town seven nights a week, sniffing out the city’s best joints, skateboard in one hand, martini in the other.
Last week was heavy on Korean home cooking that had me feeling great inside and out. I hit a few misses, so the week feels a bit light, but the hits were good enough to make up for it. I also checked out a few hyped new openings that already feel like they’re on the right track. I’m headed out of town this week for work and can’t wait to eat absolutely everything while I’m in LA.
Colin
Sunn’s
📍 Chinatown
🍽️ Korean
It has been a while since my last visit, but Sunn’s is still one of my favorite restaurants in NYC. The food just makes you feel good—even when you eat the whole menu—and the experience is unlike any other restaurant around. I stopped in as a walk-in pretty early in the evening with my friend Bryce (Ensenada) and was lucky enough to get the last walk-in spot. The format of the menu is pretty consistent, while the ingredients and sets for each dish change quite often, keeping it always feeling new and exciting. We ordered almost the entire menu, starting with the daily selection of banchan, which is the restaurant's signature. My favorites for this meal were the tahini mushrooms, potato salad, smoky eggplant, and a special banchan that the kitchen sent out, made of oxtail and shishitos. All the different flavors and textures make it the perfect way to start a meal. Sunny’s salad is always a must-order, changing ingredients dramatically depending on what's in season. Right now, it consists of wax beans, Sungolds, and summer melon, hitting all the right summer notes. Hwe is always a star of the menu, sliced raw fish with yuzu chogochujang and cherries. The naengmyeun cold noodles with pickled cucumber broth and a nicely boiled egg felt like a blessing on another insanely hot day. My favorite dish of the night, though, was the dak mandu, crab and chicken dumplings with garlic and chives in a bright, herbal, vinegary sauce and topped with dill. It was the last savory dish of the evening, and there was not a chance a bite was going to be left on the table. Always finish a meal at Sunn’s with their mochi cake dessert. It’s the only way to finish right.
Chada
📍 Greenwich Village
🍽️ Thai
With no big plans scheduled for the weekend, I received a text from my good friend Chef Dave Schuttenberg of Beautiful South and Kwei Fei in Charleston saying he was in town with his fam and wanted to grab some food. We decided on Thai and thankfully were able to scoop up a last-minute res at Chada, one of the better Thai restaurants in town that opened recently. I had only been once before and really enjoyed it, this visit was no different. It’s always fun to catch up with old friends, and to me, there is no better way than over a fun meal. Dave and I go way back to when he was working the kitchen at 5 Ninth in ‘05, and I did a few weeks of stage shifts back there before the opening of Fatty Crab. Dave was in charge of the tunes in the kitchen and was immediately someone I wanted to be friends with. Also, in a world that at the time was so dominated by macho bullshit, Dave was just a good dude. A few months later, we opened Fatty Crab with Dave as the daytime sous chef, and we quickly got a lot closer, going through the insanity that was the first few years of that restaurant. I still hit him up any time I get down south, and hanging with him and his wife/partner Tina immediately brings me right back, every time. Back to dinner… we (I) definitely over ordered, but we got all the hits. Among the first few things to hit the table was the calamari with a sauce of salted duck egg, chili paste, and aioli, which was a great start. I always need to order the fermented pork with crispy rice when it’s on the menu, and the version here is really good. Green papaya salad with raw crab is as funky and fun as it sounds, and not for the faint of heart — the spicy papaya salad pairs really well with the gelatinous texture and slightly salty crab. Rounding out the appetizers was a perfectly fatty pork jowl topped with fried garlic and a bright dipping sauce on the side. For the large plates, we went with the crab curry, crab fried rice, and the fried whole fish. All of which I would recommend and order again; however, I must say I am partial to the steamed fish over the fried fish if I were to do it over. Chada is a really solid addition to the Thai landscape, and I’m happy to have it so close to home.
Quick hits, Pop-ups & New openings
Jinah Rhee
📍 Brooklyn
🍽️ Korean home cooking
Last Monday, my good friend Evan decided to have a bunch of us over to his place, and our friend, Jinah Rhee, was going to cook dinner for everyone. The impetus for the meal was to get some friends together and celebrate the Korean tradition of Boknal, which I now know marks the three hottest days of summer, on which Koreans eat classic restorative dishes for vitality and restorative health. I showed up a bit early and hung out with Jinah while she cooked and popped a few bottles of wine before our friends arrived. Once we were all nice and tipsy, we sat down to an incredible meal. Dinner started with Jinah’s homemade kimchi, made with komatsuna, a really crunchy Japanese mustard plant, which was a really bright and refreshing kimchi. On the table with that was a Korean herbal/ginseng chicken soup. Jinah smartly bought a bunch of extra legs so that we all got one, but the chicken was beautifully cooked, and I couldn’t stop eating it. Maybe it was all in my head, but it did feel incredibly restorative. Next up, we had galbi jjim, short ribs braised with root vegetables, mushrooms, and peppers. That dish went particularly well with the mushroom sot bap, a pot rice dish with three types of mushrooms that helped sop up the flavorful broth from the short ribs and rounded it all out. After we were all sufficiently stuffed, Jinah went back into the kitchen for one more magic moment to bring out two types of noodles to finish things up. First up was hot noodles in the fortified chicken stock. The second, and my personal favorite ending to the meal, was the cold noodles in iced kimchi broth. The whole experience was one of my favorite moments of the summer so far, and we’re already planning the next one.
Los Burritos Juarez
📍 Clinton Hill
🍽️ Mexican
Saturday afternoon I popped into Brooklyn for the first weekend's service of Los Burritos Juarez. LBJ was most recently a pop-up that I tried a few months back at Lise & Vito, and I thought it was really delicious. I rolled up around 1 p.m. to a solid line and was happy to stick it out while they got crushed on their first weekend day. I ordered three burritos, but for me, the absolute star was a perfect bean and cheese. The flour tortillas, rolled by hand, were fluffy with a nice chew, making way for the gooey bean and cheese combo that I just can’t get enough of. Really happy to come out and support for the first weekend, such a fun little place that I wish was closer to me.
Nishaan
📍 East Village
🍽️ Pakistani-American
I met up with my good friend Lala (Put it in My Mouth podcast) Saturday evening to bounce around the East Village and try some new stuff. First up was Nishaan on 1st Ave, which has been getting solid buzz recently for its Pakistani chopped cheese, so we wanted to give it a try. The sandwich was tasty, subbing in the normal burger meat for a chapli kebab, flavored with spices like cinnamon and adobo. The flavor of the meat really came through and mixed nicely with the melted cheese. Onion and peppers rounded out the sandwich, which to me ate less like a traditional chopped cheese and more like a love child of a chopped cheese and a cheese steak, omitting the normal shredduce and tomato which to me brings a lot of the texture to a chopped cheese while, not usually being present in a cheese steak — unless it’s a cheese steak hoagie. Overall, definitely worth checking out and fun to try something new. A tostada I saw another person eating looked really good as well.
Ops East Village
📍 East Village
🍽️ Pizza
After crushing the chopped cheese, we decided to try our luck popping into the brand new Ops in the East Village. Their Bushwick location has been a longtime favorite spot, so I was really excited to see them open up closer to me with an expanded menu and an additional pizza style. The new location offers what they call tavernettas, which are bar-style pies served “party cut” or “tavern style” with cracker-thin crust cut into little squares. We decided to go light and just order a pizza and a few martinis. For the pizza, we did a custom tavernetta with sausage, thick-cut onion, and anchovies. It was absolutely delicious — if I do say so myself. Looking forward to coming back and checking out some more of the new menu.
Mixteca
📍 West Village
🍽️ Mexican
One of the new openings I am most excited about is Mixteca, which I had the opportunity to check out for their first night of friends & family on Sunday night. Mixteca is the new bar from the team behind PDT, opening in the West Village, sandwiched between a few of the other bars you can often find me at (Sip & Guzzle, Dear Strangers). The menu is mostly agave-focused, with all original cocktails from the team as well as a solid mezcal selection on the back bar. Food is from the Tacos 1986 team which offers a tight menu to pair with the drinks. The cocktail highlight for me was randomly a gin and tonic riff made with celery that was really well done. Not being much of a “cocktail from the menu” guy myself, you’ll most likely catch me here just drinking mezcal neat from their collection. I could not be more excited for the team and can’t wait until they open their doors for real.
Whst about the pie at El Camino?! So damn good
😘😘😘