First Look at the NEW 12 Chairs Elevated Concept- Liba

12 Chairs is one of my favorite restaurants in NYC, and when I found out that they were opening up a brand new concept, I was psyched to get in there ASAP! It’s the first brand-new restaurant concept in over 20 years from their team, and it just opened inside The William Vale in Williamsburg. The soul of 12 Chairs is here, but the menu has a focus on a mixture of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and even more, with a lot of the magic happening in their eye catching 800 degree brick oven, the showcase of their open kitchen! And unlike 12 Chairs, this restaurant just happens to be fully kosher also, although you really won’t even notice that!

I went in just for a little taste of the menu, but there is so much more I already want to go back for! But I started with their brick oven bread that’s cooked in that beautiful oven, and that gets finished with a brush stroke of olive oil and bits of salt when it comes out of the oven, and is served with Egyptian dukkah and a side of olive oil “butter” as remember, its all kosher, so you wont find dairy here! Ripping that bread open unlocks the incredible aromatics, and the olive oil butter is a nice lighter, more flavorful bite, than that of butter, so you wont miss it at all!

Next was their Pide, or as they describe it, "if pizza was Turkish." This takes the traditional Turkish börek-style flatbread and loads it with smoked eggplant and roasted red peppers, bakes it in that brick oven, and finishes it with Spanish anchovies. The anchovy is the move here: you get that hit of salt right as the char and the sweet, smoky eggplant flavor come through underneath. It's a salty, slightly fishy bite that pulls together a few of my favorite flavor profiles into one dish!

And finally the steak tartare sando is served on toasted challah and made with mustard aioli, capers, horseradish, and sweet pickled mustard seeds right on top. I absolutely love steak tartare and could’ve have just devoured an entire bowl of just that. I wasn’t convinced the toasted challah is the perfect vessel for this, but they told me its still a work in progress dish, so it’ll be even better when you get it! The sweet pickled mustard seeds added right on top was the really unexpected surprise hit of it too!

Liba takes the spirit of what makes 12 Chairs great and elevates it into its own identity, rather than just being a kosher spinoff. And to the people who message me constantly asking for more kosher spots: I'm not going to seek those out specifically just because they're kosher, but when a kosher, gluten-free, or vegan place happens to also be this good, it's a bonus worth shouting about. The best sign is that, while good to know, it really doesnt matter, you will walk out only thinking about how good the meal was!