Dinner for two (2) at Bar Bao, located at 100 West 82nd Street.

BarBao teams the owners of the restaurant Rain — whose space has been redesigned in a less gimmicky, classier vein — with the chef Michael Bao Huynh, who ran the kitchens at Bao 111, in the East Village, and Mai House, in TriBeCa. Although the wine list is a bit too expensive and the specialty cocktails a bit too sweet, the food at BarBao reflects Mr. Huynh's gift for refracting Asian conceits and ingredients through a contemporary prism. The duck hash, combining cubes of rice cake with shredded duck confit and a poached egg, has one foot in the Far East and the other in fatty, gut-busting Momofuku Manhattan. The cuttlefish defers cunningly to many New York diners' Mediterranean sensibilities by coming up with a version of salsa verde that adds Vietnamese mint, Thai basil and yuzu to anchovy. -- Frank Bruni
-The New York Times