VUE

he four highly-contested chairs are reserved for what Common Lot calls the Kitchen Pass, where guests can purchase (for $105 per person) front-row seats and watch as the chefs on the line prep, cook and plate dishes right in front of them. ere is also an exclusive eight-course tasting menu to go along with the Kitchen Pass dining experience, not available to those in the main restaurant. "We don't sugarcoat service whatsoever. So if it goes south, you'll hear me swearing and those sorts of things," Chef Ryan said. "You're kind of almost blacked out from everything else because you're purely focused on the kitchen." Due in part to Common Lot's BYO policy, Chef Ryan places an enormous emphasis on the food coming out of the kitchen, solely focusing on developing interesting flavors that balance their artful presentations. When coming up with the restaurant's concept, he turned to the way in which he and his wife like to eat when dining out, making an effort to try as many things as they can. "We never liked the normal structure of two or three courses, we always liked the apps—mainly because they're more challenging in terms of texture and flavor combinations." Take the beautifully plated tuna tartare, for example, a clever nod to a popular sushi roll. A mix of rich, red-colored minced fish gets lightly tossed with tangy ponzu, accompanied by sesame seeds, dollops of creamy avocado mousse and sweet wasabi gel. On top rests a perfectly smooth quenelle of cooling ginger sorbet for contrast. e interplay of Southeast Asian cuisine is evident at Common Lot in more ways than one, including the crowd favorite twice-cooked pork belly, a riff on a street food snack that Chef Ryan had in the East Village. e pork is first braised for six hours in order to render some of the fat and tenderize the meat before V U E N J . C O M 106

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