Noreetuh – Hawaiian soul food and rare Riesling in the East Village

On First Avenue in the East Village, between Seventh Street and St Marks Place, Noreetuh has spent a decade sharpening the food chef Chung Chow grew up eating on Oahu into something more exacting than its casual room lets on. Chef-Partner Chung Chow opened this modern Hawaiian restaurant with two other Per Se veterans, Gerald San Jose and Jin Ahn, in early 2015, building a menu that treats SPAM musubi, mac salad and loco moco with the same discipline the three brought from one of New York's most demanding kitchens. The restaurant's name means playground in Korean, a nod to the relaxed, unpretentious room rather than to the ambition on the plate. It holds a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, the distinction given to cooking of real quality at a moderate spend, and it has kept that reputation for ten years on a street better known for bars than for a nearly 300-bottle wine list.

01The room and the setting

Noreetuh occupies a narrow slip of a space on First Avenue, a long, tight dining room with exposed brick down one side and a distinctive wave-patterned wall running down the other, the kind of room that forces conversation between neighbouring tables whether you want it or not. The bar carries a brass pineapple lamp and other Hawaiian bric-a-brac, while the walls disappear behind small photographs of regulars, pinned up table by table over the years rather than curated by a designer. There is no signage outside; you find the door, or you don't. A terrace adds a second option for warmer evenings, a rare commodity on this stretch of the East Village.

02The chef

Chung Chow was born in Hong Kong and raised on Oahu, which gives him an insider's claim to the cuisine most chefs only visit. He trained in French technique at Le Cordon Bleu, then spent over a year at Bouchon Bistro in Napa Valley before moving on to Thomas Keller's Per Se and then to Jonathan Benno's Lincoln Ristorante, where he worked as opening sous chef. That pedigree is why Noreetuh's Hawaiian dishes read as composed rather than nostalgic: a French-trained hand applying classical technique to the Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Filipino influences that shaped Hawaiian home cooking, and his own, long before he ever ran a kitchen of his own.

Insider tip

Closed Mon–Tue; reservations open two weeks out; groups of 9+ order a set menu.

03The cooking

The menu moves from a wall of musubi — rice and filling wrapped tight in nori, everything from classic and spicy SPAM to yellowtail with yuzu mayo and a version finished with ossetra caviar — through apps built on big-eye tuna poke, Taiwanese flat cabbage with house-cured bacon, and Berkshire pork potstickers, into mains that range from a grilled chicken teriyaki bowl to peekytoe crab fried rice with smoked salmon and mentaiko. For bigger appetites and bigger tables there are large-format dishes: a char siu-glazed wagyu beef tongue served with bao, a calamansi-glazed roasted duck, a dry-aged porterhouse, and a whole roasted heritage pig that needs two weeks' notice. It is Hawaiian cooking stripped of the cliché and rebuilt with proper technique, which is precisely the quality the Bib Gourmand recognises.

04What to order

Start with the musubi platter and let the table share classic SPAM alongside Hokkaido scallop with nori mayo and lemon, or the galbi version made with braised beef short rib and kimchi. The big-eye tuna poke with macadamia nuts and pickled jalapeños is a fixture for good reason, and the mochiko fried chicken, ordered half or whole with Hawaiian macaroni salad and King's Hawaiian rolls, is the dish regulars build a visit around. Finish with the chocolate haupia sundae, built on coconut ice cream, graham crackers and Hawaiian black salt, or the simpler bruléed Hawaiian pineapple with lime zest and 'alaea salt.

05Wine and drinks

The wine programme, run by co-owner and general manager Jin Ahn, is roughly 300 selections deep with a strong representation from France and Germany, filled out with craft beers and specialty sakes. Ahn studied economics at Northwestern University before working his way through Jean-Georges and Asiate at the Mandarin Oriental on his way to Per Se, and at Noreetuh he has turned that fine-dining grounding toward German Riesling, honing the list since the pandemic into cult-classic producers and extended verticals rather than following the market toward Burgundy and Champagne. The list still finds room for serious depth elsewhere — verticals of Chateau Musar and the occasional grand cru Burgundy turn up for anyone who asks — but his own favourite pairing is simpler: an aged Northern Rhône Syrah poured against one of the kitchen's mochiko-crusted fish dishes.

06When to go and booking

Noreetuh takes reservations for brunch and dinner up to two weeks in advance. Dinner runs Wednesday to Sunday, with brunch added on Saturdays and Sundays; the restaurant is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Large-format orders such as the dry-aged porterhouse or beef tongue need four days' notice and prepayment; the whole roasted heritage pig needs a fortnight.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.