NYC has a gorgeous new Southeast Asian restaurant in twin twins

Have I dreamed that I was eating the Vietnamese Vietnami meat and the Lao-style grilled chicken, not in the center of Indochine or Tao, but on the frostly third floor of Deutsche Bank Center, AKA former Center Time Warner?

No, it was all true-and one of the happiest surprises of the world in the world.

Following a mixed risk of being mixed last fall, Twin Tails hit her step and is the new kitchen star of Columbus Circle Mall. The widespread place of Southeast Asia by the quality brand team destroys the ghosts of the three flops preceding on the third floor.

Quality Brands runs countries from the small Italian Troratoria Don Angie to Giant Steakhouse Smith & Wolensky in Middle Eastern Zou Zau Zou. This is the group’s first strength in Asian tariffs and is surprising excellent.

While the pleasant, pleasant, cosmopolitanized fee of Southeast Asia is reminiscent of spots in the city city center, Twin Tails stops to be a party scene. Carted for adults-and for adult finances, with small plates of up to $ 29, most of the main courses in the $ 39-65 rank and some esoteric meat dishes costing up to $ 130. However, not once the waiters worried us with the standard “All our dishes were made for its” Upsell Pitch, though – get this! – They were all big enough to separate.

The humor of the antiseptic center disappears after you pass through the bronze doors. Twin twins boast 300 seats including the ribbon, a lounge and private rooms, but what most dinners will experience is the main dining room with 140 seats, which is divided by the Avroko design firm into five intimate areas with low -rise crops.

It easily wears its faux-exoticism; There are no temple motifs or jade elephants. The mirrored walls are pink and amber, the banquets are worn with deep yellow. The tops of the table are of the buried roses, each with its own small shade lamp that allows you to see what you are eating even if you do not sit under custom -made amber chandeliers.

The menu is divided into different categories, such as Satay, small plates, fish, shellfish, steak, and pork and bird. There are thousands of spices, but no hot red chilis to blow up the roof of your mouth.

Grilled “night market” chicken – a reference to grilled meat with fragrance found in Thailand’s night markets – was one of the best poultry dishes I have had in the last memory. Foot, thighs and chest are baked in fish sauce and lemon; erased with cumin, garlic and ginger; Then grilled and ripe. Served is served in a soup pan made of dots. White meat was just as juicy and gentle as dark. In a city full of dry and boring chicken dishes, it’s a showstopper.

The restaurant can be packaged at night, but I had the place almost everyone for myself for a last lunch, where I bowed from the pork rolls Cha gio. A rich grind of minerals of the meat and ear -rich ear -rich ear are closed in wrappings of super fresh spring rolling. They explode on their own, but wrapping them on lettuce leaves and foaming them on the nuoc cham based on fish sauce, gets them even higher.

I was skeptical of the Red Sea Basi Curry after some sub-performing seafood choices in the early days of the restaurant. But chef/partner Craig Koketsu and executive chef Chad Brown now have cuisine cracking. The well -known fish is marinated and wrapped in banana leaves, then grilled and baked with the sharp understanding of the galangal and lime.

Rangeudriently, the only flop was a dish that the waiter said it was the pride of the house: the fresh garlic shrimp “Lotus of Siam” -stile, called for a famous Las Vegas restaurant. Maybe I caught them in a bad night, but the shrimp were almost chewed and tough when they were pulled out of their shells, and they turned tightly and cold after just minutes.

The entertainment returned with cakes such as multi-colored rainbow cake-layered sherbet with guava, macrut line, chili pineapple and graham-cashew crunches. Arctic, the aromas do not unite in a sweet blur, but stand for themselves individually.

Twin twins may not be Saigon or Bangkok, but it is a shorter trip to Columbus Circle-exactly what needed cross-sectional point of Southeast Asia of Midtown and Side Side.