Yunnan Kitchen's Superb Chinese | Lower East Side, NYC

How the superb Yunnan Kitchen was born

Some broken dreams can be a delicious boon.

Our favorite recent example: Travis Post, the executive chef of the brand-new Yunnan Kitchen in the Lower East Side, first had visions of opening a Sichuanese restaurant. Instead, after a fateful meeting with owner Erika Chou, Post trained his knives on the cuisine of Yunnan in southwestern China.

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Thank goodness for misdirection, as Post's food is outstanding.

Sheets of tofu skin ($8) are treated like a delicate spring green, tossed with lime juice, rice vinegar, house-made chile oil, slivered red onions and a fistful of cilantro leaves. This is no salad for the meek.

Likewise, fried head-on shrimp ($13) boldly crackle with the spark of both lime juice and wild-lime leaves, and a grilled skewer of fingerling potatoes and shishito peppers ($5) is dusted with an intense blend of black cardamom, cumin and Sichuan peppercorns.

There is plenty of subtlety on display here, too. Grassy chrysanthemum greens ($7) are gently coated with a dressing of sesame paste, soy sauce and black vinegar, and a salad ($9) of wood-ear mushrooms, gingko nuts, lily bulbs and blanched celery is a cavalcade of texture. 

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Cheers to happy accidents.

Yunnan Kitchen, 79 Clinton St. (at Rivington St.); 212-253-2527 or yunnankitchen.com

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