Annisa Restaurant

Annisa, Anita Lo’s original flagship restaurant was opened a decade ago in a small, garage-size space on Barrow Street. It was a raging success and Anita Lo came to be counted among the top chefs of New York. Anita Lo attempted to expand her brand further by opening a dumpling chain, the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar and a West Village restaurant, Bar Q. She also appeared on various popular cooking shows, such as Iron Chef and Top Chef Masters. However, last July, tragedy struck and Annisa burned down in a freak nighttime electrical fire.

Not the one to give up, Anita Lo decided to put Annisa back on track and she was successful in doing that. The restaurant was reopened with a new kitchen, new color scheme, and an updated menu. What else? Well, it seems that Anita Lo wants to do things just right this time. She and Jennifer Scism (co-owner of Annisa) enlisted the help of a professional Feng Shui consultant. So, while they have retained the wooden bar in front and the thirteen tables in front of the kitchen, the faded-yellow color palette has a coppery red color to augment it, along with a hoard of other trinkets, such as mirrors, vases of water, buried Chinese good-luck coins, etc. We believe that all these good luck charms are working their magic because Annisa is fast climbing the popularity ladder.

Coming to the menu, the new one is heavily inspired by her travel experiences last year. She has retained some of the signature items from the original menu, like the soup dumplings with molten foie gras in the center and seared foie on top – but most of the menu has a lot of new additions. Treat your taste buds to amazing creations like the lamb entrée cooked in South African style which salutes bobotie, the popular South African ground-lamb-and-egg casserole. Or, the truffled veal jus, oyster cream sauce and brown butter surrounding a veal entrée that’s cooked according to impeccable French standards. Or, the butter-poached lobster made from pink lobster, greener ramps, and green sweet-pea flan. There’s more good stuff from where that came from.

Anita Lo also runs the pastry department, and if you have enough space in your stomach after the appetizers and the main course, you can sample mouthwatering desserts like crispy beignets filled with warm salted butterscotch; the poppy-seed bread-and-butter pudding; the malt-and-chocolate triumvirate with chocolate-almond pudding, and the strawberry mille-feuille.

This time round, Anita Lo doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to build her brand image or gain popularity. There is nothing of the superstar about this effort to please her patrons. All she wants to do is deliver old-fashioned gourmet pleasure.

ü  Address: 13 Barrow St between Seventh Ave South and W 4th St

ü  Phone: 212-741-6699

ü  Timings: Mon–Sat 5:30–10:30pm, Sun 5:30–9:30pm.

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