Van Ða + Brie Ruais
The flatware at Van Đa is rose gold, as is the light. Napkins are greige, macramé froths the walls, a fiddle-leaf fig ruffles from a slickly minimal pot. Everything about the décor of this intimate East Village restaurant feels curated for 2019. Maybe. Or maybe the palette is creamily pastel to spotlight the brilliantly hued food: marigold colored rice cakes on a seafoam plate, spring green dill and iridescent branzino on a millennial pink one.
If the style feels very now, the cooking at Van Ða is imbued with regional tradition. Its moniker means “warrior woman” in Vietnamese and the restaurant, which opened this spring, is indeed run by two fierce women: owner Yen Ngo, who develops recipes based on her childhood in Vietnam, and chef Hannah Wong. They’ve designed a menu that reads like a flavor map with dishes assigned to distinct cities.
The aforementioned rice cakes are Banh Khot from Huế. Spiced with turmeric and formed into tiny cups, they are filled with coconut and cured egg yolk, wild mushrooms and mint— savory bites of cool custard and crunch. Also from Huế are tapioca dumplings steamed in banana leaves (a must), while sautéed morning glories with rich tangy fermented tofu take you to Hanoi. Sip its signature cocktail between destinations. Vodka and gin with tomato water, cilantro and lime refreshes like kneeling in a garden, greens crushed to unleash their fragrance.
Onward to Ludlow Street, where an inquisitive show is on view at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. The Second Body explores how physical presence extends beyond corporeality. Where do we end, whom do we shape, and who shapes us? Brie Ruais’s Topology of a Garden, Northeast, 135 lbs (2018) offers answers through a geography of pigmented clay. Its surface is cracked, wrinkled, blush and gray with patches of blue, like bruises or veins. A footprint here, a delicate fern imprint there. Ruais works by pressing her body weight into clay to cast her form and the ground—her backyard in this case. The labor-intensive process fuses her history and her present into art, every line and scar preserved to make something new. It’s not unlike modern takes on heritage cooking.
7/5/2019