You Heard It Here First      10/24/2008  

Desnuda Finds New Use For Gravity Bong

Photo by Joe DiStefano.

Desnuda, the East Village ceviche/wine bar from the Death & Co. crowd, has been open for less than a week, but the joint is smoking. Along with a roster of traditional and new-fangled ceviches Executive Chef Christian Zammas offers freshly shucked oysters that are smoked on the spot. After tasting a decidedly new-fangled dish of sea urchin perched atop slices of fresh fig with a mound of sweet crab meat, I asked Zammas whether he’d ever tried smoking uni.

In short order he broke out a device that might well be the world’s first gastronomic gravity bong. He plunged a cut-off soda bottle into a water bath and lit a bowl of lapsong souchong tea. Raising the bottle sucked up enough smoke to fill two shot glasses. Zammas quickly inverted each over a dish containing a portion of orange urchin gonads. I broke the seal and savored a bit of the smoke before slurping down the sea urchin. Zammas told me he’s game to put smoked sea urchin on Desnuda’s menu, but expressed some concern about using a device that looks more like it belongs in a kitchen than a dorm room. “There’s gonna be a time when a beat cop walking by is gonna be like, what in the shit is going on in there?”

-Joe DiStefano

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