Fusion cuisine is alive and well in New York City, where restaurateurs Simon Oren and David Sasson have teamed up with chef Alex Ureña to open a tapas-dim sum restaurant.
Tasca Chino, Spanish for “Chinese tavern,” opened on April 13 in the original space of another fusion restaurant, Sushi Samba, which still has locations in New York City, Miami, Las Vegas and London, and where Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian food and drink comingle.
Oren and Sasson are also partners in several other restaurants, including Barbounia, which serves Mediterranean food, and the modern American Pavilion Market Café. Oren is also a principal in the mostly French Tour de France restaurant group and casual-dining chain 5 Napkin Burger.
Their new restaurant focuses on small plates, but also offers rice and noodle dishes derived from Spain and China, and entrées borrowing from both cuisines, as well as Ureña’s own culinary background.
A native of the Dominican Republic, Ureña started his career at fine-dining restaurants in New York City, including seven years at Bouley, before working in France and Spain. Upon his return to the United States, he was chef de cuisine at Dan Barber’s farm-to-table restaurant Blue Hill, and was the opening chef of Marseille, part of the Tour de France group, before becoming chef at his own restaurant, Ureña, and then of pan-Latin restaurant Rayuela.
“I want to have a freestyle cuisine combining Spain with Chinese cultures,” he said of the new restaurant, where he’s offering dishes such as chicken and chorizo dumplings, “which has a flavor profile that’s Spanish, but the look is Chinese,” he said.
Tapas items include tofu sautéed in soy with ginger and topped with the Spanish blood sausage morcilla. Other Asian cuisines are brought into play, too, with dishes like Garbanzo Frito & Kimchi, which is fried chickpea cakes served with Korean kimchi, Japanese ponzu sauce and wasabi mayonnaise.
The classic Spanish fried potato dish Patatas Bravas is spiked with Sichuan pepper aïoli, while other tapas, such as Pan Tomaca — bread topped with grated tomatoes and olive oil — are straight-up Spanish. Rice dishes include both paella and Chinese clay pot rice, and Sichuan dan dan noodles.
Beverages include an extensive wine list, including sherry selections, and both classic sangria and a variation made with white wine, tropical fruit and the clear Chinese spirit baijiu.
To prepare to open the restaurant, Ureña spent three months training in a Chinese restaurant, which he said was no easy task, since Chinese chefs tend to be hesitant to share their techniques.
“You have to be really close friends with somebody,” Ureña said. “I have a friend who used to work at Bouley with me for a long time, and he has a friend who has a friend who has a Chinese place. So one day we were hanging out and drinking beers, and I told him what I wanted to do. I said, ‘Let me come to the kitchen and learn some techniques you guys have.’ He wasn’t so open about the idea at first, but eventually he said, ‘Yes, come in.’”
Ureña spent that time learning to cook with a high-heat wok — “I wouldn’t say I’m a master, but I think I can get it done,” he said — as well as hand-pulled noodles.
“It seems so easy,” he said of the noodles, “but even for a real Italian pasta guy, it’s a totally different thing. Technique-wise, it’s like driving a Ferrari or Lamborghini compared to a Toyota.”
Working in the kitchen are three Chinese cooks — a dim sum chef, a wok chef and an assistant — as well as a crew of Mexican cooks who worked with Ureña at his previous Spanish and Latin restaurants.
Ureña said he anticipates an average check of $55 to $65 at the 120-seat restaurant.
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