Odo

Located in the back of all-day café and cocktail bar Hall, Odo is a 14-seat kaiseki with a 9 course, $200 dinner. The chef used to run the kitchen at Midtown’s Kajitsu, one of New York’s most celebrated vegan restaurants and a destination for Japan’s Buddhist shojin ryori cuisine. Odo joins the city’s crowded fray of high-end Japanese restaurants, but it stands out because of its chef’s experience and the complexity of the dishes being served. Alas, plant-based diners may be disappointed to find out the food isn’t vegan or even vegetarian. But, the menu is guided by the same seasonality of kaiseki cuisine that he practiced at Kajitsu and in Japan. The nine-course menu starts with a sakizuke — a small dish that’s a sort of amuse-bouche — like fried taro with Pacific spiny lobster, mushrooms, and truffle yoshinoni. It doesn’t go over the top on luxury ingredients, though there are a handful in the yakimono (washugyu rib eye) and the oshinogi (live snow crab) courses. Seafood factors into five of the courses, including a sushi course of six nigiri, and dessert includes yuzu jelly served in the fruit’s shell.