NOREETUH

 

I followed my own advice here, inspired by the enthusiasm of my most trusted chef source to lead me to Noreetuh. First chance I had after it came on my radar, I jumped at a reservation.... not easy to procure.  I didn't even look at the menu.  Day of, I did.  And I barely saw anything that appealed to me, but said difficult reservation already procured and plans confirmed, I decided to just go with the flow.  Maybe it was the Hawaiian island spirit that swayed me, but mahalo I did.  Because Noreetuh is fanTAStic.

  Casual, vibey and energetic, it still has a polished feel.  It feels typical East Village, as the room is pretty small, dominated by the attractive back lit bar, and decorated with Hawaiian paraphernalia, polaroids of guests and frondy greenery.  We were seated a smidge before our reservation time, having both arrived a little early in anticipation of getting back to the good old times, pre-Covid.  No masks, indoors, no palpable weirdness.  The only nod that could have been attributed to the blight was QR codes for the extended wine list by the bottle (cocktails and by-the-glasses were on the back of the food menu, thankfully.). The wine list is exceptional, the by-the-bottle list is pages long, and shows a real knowledge and variety, unsurprising given the proprietor's background in fine dining.  This place might look like trendy stoner food, but it far exceeds that (although honesty it could play both hands... we didn't delve into the musubi portion of the menu, mostly due to my seaweed aversion, but those, and some sandos could definitely sate a case of the munchies).  My by-the-glass Vermentino, though, kept up with the depth of the wine list, and there are some fun cocktails to boot, all with nods to the island.  

And that food menu was extensive, and even bulked up more given it is currently Restaurant Week (read; month/s), so there was a very nicely curated prix fixe availabile.  I actually don't usually like the prix fixe, but there was one entree on it here that I wanted more than anything on the main menu, and they weren't amenable to allowing ordering individual plates from the prix fixe as à la carte.  So I went for it, opting for some luscious truffle wontons with ham hock and pickled sunchokes.  For some reason, in my mind, I was expecting a mushroom filling, even though the menu specified the ham... I was thinking truffled 'shrooms sauteed with pork, I guess.  That said, it

 was hard to be disappointed with these meaty morsels, plump with juicy meat and perfumed with truffles.  There were, too, some tasty little enokis tucked between them, so I didn't miss out on my mushrooms entirely.  My tablemate opted for a crudo, the big eye tuna poke. Its chunks of fish were so vibrant they looked like cherry tomato halves, flavored with fragrant sesame oil and crunchy nubs of macadamia nut. 

 

We opted for a few dishes off the Restaurant Week menu as well, 'cause I couldn't forgive myself if I bypassed the Caramelized Cone Cabbage, slathered in (perhaps a little too much) chipotle mayo and crunched with puffed rice.  I love a good,  slutty vegetable, and this one lived up in every sense, without losing the sweet, slippery cabbage roasted tender beneath.  Another winner were the Spanish octopus skewers, somehow magically wrapped in five-spiced bacon that had almost become one with the octo, not crunchy but not flaccid or rubbery.  It somehow reached a magical consistency and adhesion with the cephalopod, fused into one glorious bite. They were interspersed with charred green onion, and plated with some nice, pickly cabbage.

For a main (as described above), I went with that mochi-crusted fluke, a beautiful piece of snowy white fish with a perfectly crunchy, golden crust atop, bedded in long beans and lily bulbs nestled into a mild red pepper puree.  I wished the puree had a little more zip, because the dish came across a bit bland, even despite the excellent preparation of the fluke.  

The garlic shrimp bowl suffered none of that, the rice and the shrimp battling each other for most flavorful, boldly garlicky and wonderfully textured.  There a nine main course options on the Restaurant Week menu alone, and eleven on the regular menu, so there is a LOT to choose from.  Variety is not a scarcity, so even if you don't know quite what you're getting yourself into with a Hawaiian restaurant, you'd be hard pressed not to end up with something memorably delicious.

Desserts followed suit, for the most part, decadent and rich, although there was lighter bruleed Hawaiian pineapple that I actually wished I would've tried, in retrospect.  The best one was the Chocolate Haupia sundae, a chewy, fudgy chocolate-coconut pudding with an onslaught of weightless whipped cream impaled by crisp shards of graham cracker wafers.  I figure this is kind of a deconstructed Hawaiian take on s'mores, and all the better for it.   

Just as lusty was a macadamia nut brownie sided with a cool scoop of coconut ice cream.  The brownie was so dense and fudgy it just about fell through the plate, but chocophiles rejoice: either of these two will evoke bliss.  Less successful was the mango and pandan pie, a gorgeous bicolor wedge topped with scrumptious, crunchy sweet puffed rice and layered atop a buttery, flaky crust, but the mango lacked pucker, it was more the color orange than the flavor of anything, and the pandan had a strangely oceanic taste, as if they used a seaweed-based gelling agent to achieve that excellently wiggly texture.  It would've been great had the mango displayed its typical vibrancy, but something got a little muted.

But that was all that was nit-pickable; Noreetah's got it going on, for sure.  Fun soundtrack, attentive and friendly servers, and a lot of know-how behind the scenes.   Just like the islands themselves, genuine hospitality,  a little bit exotic, and glimmers of magic throughout.

 128 First Avenue b/w  7th St and St. Marks

tel. 646. 892.3050