Huso

Behind the Boutique Door

The entrance on Greenwich Street gives nothing away. Marky's Caviar operates a TriBeCa retail boutique at street level, a functional shop selling tins and provisions, and the restaurant is through a door behind it. That threshold separates two registers entirely: the utilitarian commerce of the shop and a dining room fitted with flowing white drapes, generous table spacing, and large windows that pull in the neighbourhood's low-rise light. It is an arrangement that places Huso in a small category of New York restaurants where the approach demands a deliberate act of discovery before the meal begins.

The room itself reads as a deliberate counterpoint to the decade-long reign of exposed-brick, foraged-ingredient austerity that dominated fine dining from roughly 2012 onward. Polished surfaces, elegant plating, and a staff that moves with the rehearsed ease of French service traditions, Huso reads closer to the uptown formal register of Per Se or Le Bernardin than to the newer wave of tasting-menu restaurants like Atomix, even if the price tier and format overlap. The comparison matters because it signals what kind of evening this is: formal, choreographed, and weighted toward classical French service.

The Choreography of Service

French service at this level operates as a parallel narrative to the food. At Huso, sommelier Michael O'Callaghan oversees a list of 340 selections across 1,500 inventory positions, with particular depth in Burgundy, California, France broadly, and Italy. The list is priced in the upper bracket, with many bottles exceeding $100, corkage sits at $125 for those bringing their own. That corkage figure alone positions this as a room where wine is taken seriously as a programmatic element, not an afterthought.

The wine-food pairing structure at a caviar-anchored tasting menu presents specific demands that O'Callaghan's Burgundy-heavy list is well-placed to meet. Blanc de blancs Champagne, white Burgundy, and restrained northern Rhône whites all have the acidity and textural weight to carry cured fish eggs without overriding them. The Burgundy depth on the list signals a deliberate alignment between what the kitchen sends out and what the floor positions alongside it, the kind of coordination that separates a front-of-house team from a drinks department that happens to occupy the same building.

General Manager Kevin Goyenechea shapes the room's overall register, which sits closer to the formal European service tradition than to the casual-fine-dining tone that has become the default for new New York openings. The table spacing, the draping, the choreography of courses, these are choices that come with a specific contract: the guest surrenders pace control and trusts the kitchen and floor to move the evening forward. That exchange works well when the floor is attentive without being present at every beat, a balance that the Huso team appears to have calibrated deliberately.

The Menu's Structural Logic

The tasting menu at Huso uses caviar as an organizing principle rather than a topping. The kitchen, led by chef Buddha Lo, who is also a co-owner alongside Mark Zaslavsky and Mark Gelman, applies classical French technique to seasonal produce, with cured fish eggs appearing at structurally significant moments rather than as a luxury flourish piled onto neutral carriers. Ora King salmon with cream and croutons appears early, establishing the kitchen's comfort with richness modulated by acid and texture. A foie gras and brioche preparation demonstrates classical French literacy; the pairing is familiar, but the execution described as notably precise.

The reference points reach wider than France. The dry-aged duck with rhubarb draws on Lo's time at Eleven Madison Park, where acidity and fermented components were regularly deployed to cut through duck fat and concentrate savory depth. Rhubarb as a pairing agent in that context is a citation, not an accident, it places Huso within a specific lineage of New York fine dining that runs through EMP's Daniel Humm era and its approach to seasonal acidity. A seared scallop with morel and asparagus reads as the kitchen's seasonal statement, a combination where the accuracy of timing on the scallop determines whether the dish works at all.

The menu is built to function without the supplements. At the upper end of the New York tasting menu market, where Masa sets one ceiling and the supplement culture at rooms like The French Laundry and Alinea suggests another, Huso's decision to make the supplements optional rather than structural means the base menu reads as complete. That is a meaningful choice at this price tier.

Placement in the City's Fine Dining Tier

Opinionated About Dining ranked Huso #244 in North America in 2025, up from #217 in 2024 and following a Highly Recommended designation in 2023. The trajectory across three consecutive OAD cycles suggests a room that has found its operational rhythm post-opening, with the rankings reflecting improved consistency rather than a single strong performance. OAD rankings carry weight with a specific segment of the fine dining audience, the kind of reader who cross-references with lists from Providence in Los Angeles, Lazy Bear in San Francisco, or Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg. Within that comparable set, Huso is a recent entrant performing above early-stage expectations.

In the context of New York's French-influence tasting menu tier specifically, the competitive set includes rooms with substantially more Michelin hardware. Le Bernardin holds three stars; so does Per Se. Huso operates without that particular signal while maintaining a formal register and price point that places it in adjacent territory. The OAD ranking serves as the relevant credential here, offering a cross-city comparison tool that Michelin's New York-specific lens does not always provide. For the reader comparing Huso against 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana internationally or Alain Ducasse at Louis XV as a reference point for French service tradition, the OAD signal provides the most useful calibration.

Lo's two consecutive Leading Chef wins brought him a level of public recognition, and Huso has attracted a corresponding audience mix, regulars familiar with his earlier work alongside a newer cohort drawn by the television profile. The dining room's formal register manages that audience blend without visible friction, which is itself a service achievement.

Planning Your Visit

Huso is open Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 9 pm and is closed Monday and Tuesday. Address: 323A Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013. Service: Sommelier-led, formal French register with a wine list of 1,500 positions. Wine budget: Plan for $100+ bottles; corkage at $125 if bringing your own. Booking: Reservations are essential. Supplements: Available but not structurally required by the menu. Google reviews average 4.7 across 266 responses, consistent with a room that has stabilised its service delivery.

For a different take on ambitious US tasting menus, Emeril's in New Orleans offers a useful regional counterpoint.

FAQ

What's the must-try dish at Huso?

The dry-aged duck with rhubarb is the most cited dish for good reason: it connects the kitchen's French technique with Lo's time at Eleven Madison Park, where seasonal acidity deployed against rich proteins was a defining approach. The foie gras and brioche preparation is the cleaner test of classical French literacy. Both are part of the base tasting menu; neither requires a supplement. The caviar applications are the restaurant's conceptual spine, but those two dishes are where the kitchen's range is most legible.