{"id":337331,"date":"2026-09-03T21:40:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T21:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337331\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T21:40:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T21:40:34","slug":"restaurant-review-somssi-and-noury-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337331\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurant Review: Somssi and Noury in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York is a tongue town. Katz\u2019s<\/a> has been slicing it by the pound for decades. It\u2019s a Jewish classic. My grandfather Sam often ordered a tongue omelet, an object of perverse and horrified fascination. I\u2019d sooner have bit off my own than sampled that thing. But the universe laughs last, eventually. I\u2019ve since eaten tongue, happily, hither and yon. On tacos or in mole, as an antipasto or the garnish on a Boulud-ified wedge salad<\/a>. But I\u2019ve never encountered any tongue as tonguelike as the ox tongue at Somssi<\/a> in the Village, where it is scored, grilled, and glazed and presented undisguised, as recognizable as the nose on your face. It is the rare entr\u00e9e that offers itself up to be French-kissed.<\/p>\n

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to serve a dish like this, not least when it is one of only four entr\u00e9e offerings, and a certain amount of finesse to pull it off. Somssi (pronounced SOHM-she), which opened on a stretch of MacDougal Street dominated by the alfresco aperitivo sippers at Dante<\/a>, has both.<\/p>\n

Somssi is the newest restaurant from the Na:Eun Hospitality group, which includes J.P. and Ellia Park\u2019s Atomix<\/a>, the every-award-winning tasting counter; the couple\u2019s original restaurant, the prix fixe Atoboy;<\/a> and Naro<\/a> in Rockefeller Center. Somssi\u2019s proprietress is Ahris Kim, Na:Eun\u2019s former director of operations, but it represents a group effort. J.P.\u00a0is listed as its \u201cculinary director,\u201d consulting on the menu with Yoonsoo Park of Atoboy and Naro; former Atomix chef Daniel Gronert is in the kitchen. The Parks are the majority owners and leased Kim the space (it previously housed another Atomix outcropping, Acru). These back-office dealings aren\u2019t of especial interest to most diners, and I recommend treating Somssi as what it effectively is, a sparky little sibling to a by-now very august elder. I was dutifully wowed by my meal at Atomix when I finally managed to crack a reservation, but it\u2019s neither feasible nor cost-effective to eat there on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

Somssi has, if not a chip on its shoulder, then a spring in its step. It would be shabby to recommend it as a way to get your Park fix on a (relative) budget, but more to the point, it wouldn\u2019t be quite accurate. I found myself thinking of it as a school-play production to Atomix\u2019s grand opera, starting with the haunted-farmhouse interiors with their mismatched chairs, fraying lace curtains, and homely still lifes, through to the frankness of Jenny Eagleton\u2019s wine list, with its chatty marginalia (\u201cVineyard est. 1130\u201d \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a ros\u00e9, maybe it\u2019s a red, who knows\u201d). And this is all before Somssi slips you the tongue.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s served like a steak, tender but with a non-soft chew, a little reminiscent of uncured pastrami. It\u2019s glazed in a sweetened sake-and-soy tare that reminded me of Nobu<\/a>\u2019s famous black cod with miso<\/a>, pricked up by a pat of wasabi. Despite a thoroughgoing incorporation of Korean and Japanese ingredients and flavors, Somssi doesn\u2019t feel overtly \u201cKorean,\u201d even while spiking the beef-and-pork rag\u00f9 on its linguine with mustard-green kimchee. Instead, the restaurant feels both playful and smart. There are the broad strokes of the neo-bistro playbook here \u2014 a few crudi, a lone pasta, a couple larger cuts of meat, the requisite branzino \u2014\u00a0but Somssi, which means, roughly, \u201cskill developed through experience,\u201d makes good on its goal to goad diners a little farther from their comfort zones. What could\u2019ve been just another lamb chop is a bigger, gamier mutton chop, two bones bisected down their peppered equator to reveal the red meat within, dressed in a cumin-rich sauce for a chophouse take on Sichuan cumin lamb. Schnitzel is threaded through with shrimp farce before being fried in both bread crumbs and sesame seeds, for a schnitzel \u00e0 la shrimp toast.<\/p>\n

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\n Somssi’s cozy room is a showcase for technically precise cooking, such as an ornate potato presentation with caviar and raw scallops with strawberries and Thai basil. Hugo Yu.\n <\/p>\n

\n Somssi’s cozy room is a showcase for technically precise cooking, such as an ornate potato presentation with caviar and raw scallops with strawberries… more
\n Somssi’s cozy room is a showcase for technically precise cooking, such as an ornate potato presentation with caviar and raw scallops with strawberries and Thai basil. Hugo Yu.\n <\/p>\n

Not every dish rises to the same level, and on a small menu, misses can feel magnified \u2014 a not-especially-interesting fennel salad, a dessert course (olive oil cake, fig-leaf custard and granita, or a scoop of popcorn-flavored ice cream) that didn\u2019t do much for me whichever way I played it. But I found the little-sister energy of Somssi more winning than any of its stumbles. \u201cWant me to shake it?\u201d a host-cum-server, one of a pair of wisecracking guardians at Somssi\u2019s door, asked, seasoning a brown-paper lunch bag of French fries with furikake or kimchee-cheddar seasoning (the better option). Then, cackling, he broke into a little dance.<\/p>\n

A few blocks away, another little-sibling restaurant is shaking, too. Noury<\/a> is the second restaurant from the team behind Kiko<\/a>, a Japanese-y bistro I admired<\/a> in Hudson Square. Husband-and-wife team Alex Chang and Lina Goujjane (he cooks, she somms) own Noury, too, but the restaurant is as much a showcase for chef de cuisine Joji Miwa. If Kiko was Japanese-y, Noury is izakaya-ish, a rotating selection of small plates in a more casual, compact, one-room setting. (Kiko, as I wrote last year, is ryokan-chalet \u2014\u00a0I\u2019ll be glad to see its barroom roaring fire again when the weather cools.) Miwa, who cooked in Japan before returning to his native U.S., Greenmarkets up the izakaya standards: on one of my visits, shira-ae, a creamy dressing made of silken tofu, blanketed red cherries, and sugar snaps; on a later-summer follow-up, fat figs. Jimmy Nardello<\/a> peppers and hunks of nectarine (by the time you read this, their season will be nearly over) make a beautiful salad, heated by ginger ponzu and a delicate snowfall of dried bonito flakes. I particularly enjoyed hand rolls of eel brushed with ankimo (monkfish liver) before being grilled, and long, skewered chicken tsukune (meatballs), loose and crumbly and ready to sop up a pool of ready egg yolk.<\/p>\n

Izakayas are drinking dens, and while the ambience at Noury is more neighborhood restaurant than dim watering hole, Goujjane and her drinks team offer a nicely chosen wine list and a number of sakes (seven of them by the glass), as well as a few menu items seemingly designed to soak them up. (The prawn-and-onion kakiage, a server joked, is more or less a non-trademarked Bloomin\u2019 Onion.) I also wouldn\u2019t skip sweets. Miwa\u2019s Zerbinati melon<\/a> parfait, a tall soda-shop glass layered with ice cream, tapioca, melon jelly, and a salty sake-lees sabayon, makes dreamy use of the season\u2019s sweetest, sunniest cantaloupes, a thin slice of which crowns the top like a bright-orange grin.<\/p>\n

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