From Basquiat to Bohemian

After months of wanting to try this restaurant I finally made it there last night with my friend Terry. Bohemian is a secret little restaurant hidden behind a Japanese meat shop in Noho. This resto has no phone number and and it's whereabouts is spread through word of mouth. Once someone goes they get a name card and the card and number gets passed along.

Apparently this building was owned by Andy Warhol and it's said that Basquiat himself died at this address. The long hallway leads you down to a door where you need to buzz a doorbell to get in.

The space is small and cozy. It's like you are in someone's living room. The furniture is modern and there's a Japanese garden in the back of the space. The food was great. We tried almost everything on the menu; beef sashimi, uni coquette, mushroom yuzu salad, shrimp with garlic, black miso cod and mini burgers. The beef sashimi was really good and the uni coquette was really creamy and delicious. We ended on two awesome desserts; a sake panna cotta with kokuto and a chocolate crème brulée.

The only strange thing was the crowd. There wasn't a simple Japanese person in there. I would have expected that on a weekend but on a Tuesday night it was a bit surprising. The food actually seemed to also be catering to a foreign tongue. It wasn't very traditional in that sense. Some of the taste and ideas were rooted in Japanese dishes but then really taken to a whole other place. Even the black cod had a little pot of cheese gratin on the side. I normally wouldn't love this kind of fusion but the taste were all really working so I have to give it the props it deserves. It was almost a french take on Japanese cuisine if I had to compare to anything. Definitely worth tasting everything on the menu. I look forward to going back again soon.

Bohemian
57 Great Jones street
Ground Floor