Sixty Three Clinton

While explaining that the butter for our cheddar biscuit was flown in from Normandy, our server at Sixty Three Clinton giggled. We'll blame it on a few too many nights at fancy tasting menu restaurants—listening to suited servers tell us the life story of a quail without ever coming close to cracking a smile—but this display of normal human emotion took us by surprise.

But Sixty Three Clinton strives to be the tasting menu equivalent of the mother in Mean Girls: the one who says, “I'm not like a regular mom, I'm a cool mom.” And for the most part, they pull it off beautifully. If you’re interested in trying a tasting menu, but don’t have a dinner jacket or hundreds of dollars to spend, this Lower East Side restaurant is worth checking out.

photo credit: Giada Paoloni

photo credit: Giada Paoloni

photo credit: Giada Paoloni

Sixty Three serves a seven-course tasting for $112, in a dining room that feels like a minimalist coffee shop. But the best seats are the four facing the small kitchen. Here, you can drink a white Negroni while watching chefs (all men, mostly tattooed) fan sizzling duck breasts on a Japanese grill, and place ramekins full of ham-and-cheese chawanmushi into a wood-fired oven. The menu changes seasonally, but expect dainty plates that feel like they'd be way more expensive elsewhere, and numerous opportunities to add caviar. 

Despite all the perfectly tweezed flowers on the breakfast taco, Sixty Three Clinton is laid-back: the chefs wear baseball caps and Reeboks, a regular named John discusses the city's best movie theaters, and a former server brings pupusas for the people in the kitchen, before sitting down at the bar to celebrate her birthday. In comparison to other caviar-wielding tasting menu spots that charge a whole lot more for a straight-faced quail biography, it stands out. You could celebrate a special occasion meal here without wearing something you bought for a wedding, and—as long as you're careful with the supplements—still be able to pay your monthly rent.

Food Rundown

photo credit: Giada Paoloni

The Tasting Menu

Though the dishes change often, you can count on the first course being the breakfast taco—a palm-sized tortilla with a fancy looking hashbrown, a spoonful of smoked salmon roe, and a quarter of ajitama. We did not opt for any of the extras or add-ons—caviar hand-rolls for $55, or Hokkaido uni on the breakfast taco for an additional $22—but if you added them all, they’d be more expensive than the tasting menu itself. We’d recommend skipping the add-ons and ordering a few cocktails instead. The rest of the menu might include things like a version of shrimp n’ grits, which comes with a congee-like porridge and one deep-fried shrimp, or a Basque cheesecake with grilled grapes from southern Spain.