Fulgurances - laundromat (NYC)

A residency held at the counter

At the counter, Nicholas Tamburo works as Chef at Fulgurances - laundromat (NYC) in Greenpoint, New York City, close enough to the open kitchen for the room to see the station change hands. His own story begins outside the usual kitchen-school shorthand. Tamburo studied at Emerson College, and he has said, “I got really interested in food around that time.” He places the first real turn toward cooking near the end of college: “I started cooking sort of the end of my time in college.” At this address, that kind of hinge matters. The restaurant is built for chefs in motion, not for a single fixed authorship. The Fulgurances model gives residents a defined stretch of freedom, with the permanent kitchen holding the method steady while the menu changes around the maker. Tamburo’s role sits inside that structure, where a chef has to read the room, the pass, the incoming menu, and the resident’s hand without losing the discipline of service. His own signature language has included veal sweetbreads, a dish that asks for exact heat, texture, and restraint rather than ornament. In a former laundromat, that restraint has room to show.

The menu changes by residency

The program here turns on a seasonal tasting format, shaped by each resident chef and supported by a permanent team. The house has used residencies of 3-6 month or 4-6 month length, giving sous-chefs and emerging cooks a station where a menu can sharpen over time rather than harden into permanence. Courses have varied by resident: the opening menu was a five-course tasting built around New York state seasonal ingredients, while later menus moved through Korean-Mexican fried chicken wings, seaweed waffles, buckwheat noodles, and a larder of foraged North American plants and animals preserved at peak. The current structured menu language names dishes such as oyster with sea lettuce and yuzu vinegar, mackerel with dill and feta, tomato tartine with mustard greens, and pork with shiso. Those plates suit the address because they carry the mark of an incubator: acid, herb, smoke, preservation, and cross-cultural memory handled at the bench rather than announced from the dining room. Wine pairings sit alongside the tasting menu, curated to follow the resident’s progression without turning the meal into a separate cellar performance.

Brick, stamped ceiling, open pass

The room still keeps traces of its first life. Exposed brick, a stamped ceiling, and the proportions of the converted laundromat give the restaurant a plain working frame, softened by the intimacy of counter dining and the movement of the open kitchen. Greenpoint gives the restaurant a neighborhood pace rather than a formal procession. The counter overlooks the cooks, so the residency model is not an abstract idea. It is visible in the gestures: a sauce finished, a tartine cut, an oyster dressed with yuzu vinegar, a plate passed while Nicholas Tamburo’s next menu is already beginning to take shape in the laundromat room.