63 Clinton

63 Clinton starts with a shared history, not a category label. Chef Sam Clonts and Raymond Trinh grew up in Southeastern Arizona, became longtime friends, and later worked together in New York. Their Lower East Side restaurant uses Sonoran flavors, whole-animal butchery and seasonal regional ingredients to shape a tasting menu with a clear origin.

The Southwest runs through the technique

The kitchen describes a course-by-course meal that balances familiar references with refined handling. The Southwest influence is structural: it guides flavor and ingredient choices rather than appearing as a decorative accent on otherwise generic contemporary plates. Whole-animal work brings another discipline, asking the menu to make use of more than a narrow set of prized cuts.

Two partners, one dining room

Clonts trained and worked at Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare before leading the kitchen at Bar Uchu; Trinh joined him at Brooklyn Fare and later helped run Uchu’s front and back of house. At 63 Clinton, they are co-owners, with Clonts as executive chef and Trinh leading the team alongside him. That combined kitchen and hospitality history supports a Michelin-starred tasting menu whose defining story remains their Arizona upbringing.