The way Jean-Marc Houmard tells it, Mads Refslund, a founder of the world-famous Noma in Copenhagen, was in New York on vacation last summer, dining at Bond St., one of the downtown restaurants in which Mr. Houmard is a partner. “We hit it off,” Mr. Houmard said. “At that time we were looking for a chef and we convinced him to drop something he was doing in Copenhagen.”
Mr. Refslund, who has not been involved in Noma for several years and who also closed his own restaurant in Copenhagen, MR, is now the executive chef at Acme, a reworking of what had been a venerable Cajun-style homage to the Big Easy. The new menu includes house-cured salmon, a soup of celery root and chestnuts with a whiff of bitter chocolate, duck in a jar with pickled vegetables, salt-baked beets with grapefruit, hay-roasted sunchokes, black cod with smoked bone marrow, chicken with potatoes and fried eggs, and a beer and bread porridge dessert with salted caramel. “The menu is really his idea of bistro food,” Mr. Houmard said. “We don’t want to raise expectations that this is a super-foodie place.” Mr. Houmard, his fellow managing partner, Jon Neidich, and others involved in the restaurant are all well-connected to the fashion and art worlds. Be chic — or at least wear black — and do not fail to check out the art on the walls by names like Peter Doig.
Acme, 9 Great Jones Street (Lafayette Street), NoHo, (212) 203-2121.
Loading Twitter messages...