DISH OF THE WEEK: Honey Butter Chips at OIJI

Every week, I document another dish that impressed and satiated me during my food adventures around New York City

It’s a bit of a problem for me when a restaurant serves one amazing dish after another. It makes for an incredible, revelatory meal. But it makes it frustrating when I sit down to write a dish of the week post and I have a difficult time deciding on just one stand-out dish.

Oiji, a new small-plate Korean restaurant in the East Village, is one such place. We had about five dishes and I can confidently recommend each and every one. They weren’t the usual dishes you find at Korean restaurants in this city, but rather modern riffs and re-inventions of classics from two highly experienced New York chefs (one worked at Bouley, the other at Gramercy Tavern).

So which dish do I choose? Would it be the intriguing wild sesame soup with truffle oil? Or the beautifully composed beef tartare with egg yolk and ramp aioli? I’m still dreaming of the delicate truffle seafood broth with melting crispy rice crackers. Also worth raving about is the Jang-jo-rim,  a decadent bowl of brisket, mushrooms, and luxurious buttered rice.

But in the end, I chose the dish everybody else and their food blog is talking about. It’s too unique and satisfying not to feature it. The Honey Butter Chips are listed on the menu as a side order, but they come at the end of the meal posing as a dessert. The freshly fried potato chips are glazed with, you guessed it, butter and honey. There’s also a surprising dusting of cayenne pepper to give it a slightly smoky, savory note. They are an indulgent sweet, rich capper to an amazing meal and I literally could not stop popping them in my mouth.

It was difficult to choose a dish of the week because Oiji is that good. No matter what you order, you will have a breathtaking culinary experience. So the point of this article is to go and eat as much as you can!