Kyotofu@Restaurant

This isn’t your college food-co-op tofu, though, or some arbitrary marketing ploy. The owners were inspired by a Kyoto tofu manufacturer, Kyotofu-Fujino, and its affiliated cafés—in fact, the family of one of the partners owns it—but they tailored the concept for a Manhattan market. They hired a Japanese chef, Ritsuko Yamaguchi, to work within certain Far Eastern flavor parameters, but her desserts fuse Eastern and Western techniques and presentations. They also have a dainty, delicate quality—a femininity, you might say—which makes the place a magnet most nights for dainty, delicate females and chirpy, dessert-nibbling aesthetes of the opposite sex. They’re probably also drawn by the clean, contemporary look of the space, which was conceived by Hiro Tsuruta (the designer of ChikaLicious too) as a home in Kyoto, with a long pathway leading to the entrance, or, in this case, the dining room. On the way, you pass the glass-walled kitchen, where Yamaguchi can be seen drizzling syrups and cocking tuiles at jaunty angles. — Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite

Ideal Meal

Black edamame, rice balls, tofu cheesecake (and miso-chocolate petits fours, by any means necessary)

705 Ninth Ave., New York, NY 10019
nr. 48th St.

212-974-6012

@http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/kyotofu/