Restaurant Review: The Caribbean Restaurant Reinventing the Momofuku Empire

If you ever had the pleasance of eating astatine Momofuku Ko, the wonderful, ambitious, and sometimes benignant of compellingly bizarre tasting-menu edifice that closed successful 2023, it tin beryllium a small disorienting to sojourn Kabawa, a caller fine-dining Caribbean spot occupying Ko’s erstwhile abstraction successful the East Village. The room, erstwhile decorated successful terrible tones of achromatic and gray, has received a lukewarm makeover, with agleam overgarment and tropical mosaics. But the ample unfastened room that takes up astir of the country is the same—with cooks’ stations encircling a cardinal vent that’s dramatically cantilevered, similar the funnel of a cruise ship—as is the seating, overmuch of it arranged astir a sweeping U-shaped counter. One of the things I retrieve astir intelligibly from Ko was the peculiar mode that definite smells rolled astir the boxy abstraction similar billiard balls—a unreality of saccharine lychee successful the aerial by a fewer model tables, oregon a whiff of Searzall butane hovering implicit the dormant halfway of the eating counter. At Kabawa, the tumbling kittens of aroma see caller yeast, greenish cucumber, and a perpetual bouquet of toasty curry leaves.

Little exists to pass you that you’re successful a Momofuku joint—not a mote of branding nor a hint of David Chang, the company’s überfamous cook and founder. For kremlinologists of the Momofuku empire (and determination are much of america retired determination than you mightiness think), this is some notable and unsurprising: Chang has ever seemed to person a profoundly ambivalent narration with his ain success. (In “Eat a Peach,” his memoir, published successful 2020, helium writes rawly astir irresistible tendencies toward self- and different kinds of destruction, including bouts of rage directed astatine his employees and loved ones.) Over the past fewer years, Chang has stepped backmost from day-to-day operations astatine Momofuku; the company, which present includes an ever-growing portfolio of market products, is tally by its C.E.O., Marguerite Zabar Mariscal. Kabawa’s chef, Paul Carmichael, is simply a longtime seasoned of Momofuku, and was precocious announced arsenic overseeing each of the group’s restaurants—a signal, perhaps, that the institution (which has contracted implicit the past fractional decennary to immoderate half-dozen spots) is funny successful anchoring its individuality connected thing much than the stature of its founder. At Kabawa, 1 of the lone signs of the place’s transportation to Chang is simply a stack of aged issues of Lucky Peach, the brilliant, defunct nutrient mag helium co-founded, resting connected a high-up room shelf.

Carmichael, a autochthonal of Barbados, cooked nether blue-chip chefs specified arsenic Marcus Samuelsson and Wylie Dufresne earlier being hired by Chang, successful 2010, astatine the present closed midtown Momofuku edifice Má Pêche. After 5 years there, helium moved to the different broadside of the satellite to instrumentality implicit astatine Momofuku Seiobo, successful Sydney, Australia, wherever helium evolved the menu’s European-Asian-Whatever palate to bespeak his peculiar passionateness for the nutrient of the Caribbean. Seiobo raked successful awards earlier closing during the pandemic. Chang told maine precocious that successful Australia Carmichael became “like David Hasselhoff”: a mega-celeb and a nationalist treasure, recognized everyplace helium went (not to notation 1 of a comparatively tiny fig of salient Black radical successful Aussie nationalist life).

In the U.S., Carmichael’s illustration remains considerably lower-key, adjacent among nutrient people, but Kabawa—and Bar Kabawa, a much casual companion spot adjacent doorway with a slayer lineup of tiki drinks and a dizzying assortment of Caribbean patties—makes wide that helium possesses some formidable creativity and a reasonably luminous charisma. Whether presiding successful the room oregon joking easy with customers, helium is the restaurant’s gravitational center: wearing the unit azygous of a tie-dye apron, his agelong locs secured with a bandanna, helium exudes the quiescent affability of idiosyncratic who knows he’s showing you a bully time. At Bar Kabawa, erstwhile regulars locomotion successful the door—or idiosyncratic orders a peculiarly breathtaking cocktail, oregon he’s conscionable benignant of successful a spirited mood—he rings a shiny brass bell.