Out On the Town: Shukette
Ripping and Dipping with Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja
Out On the Town: Shukette
The acclaimed and much-buzzed-about modern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern restaurant Shukette has been open for three years on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 24th Street in Chelsea, but I regrettably didn’t pull up a seat until last month. It’s a favorite of friend of LAST CALL David Lebovitz when he’s in New York, who likes to meet up there with our mutual friend and Ciao, Gloria owner Renato Poliafito. Though he, and another good friend, both warned about the noise level in the open kitchen restaurant. In his September 2021 review of Shukette (the name is derived from the Hebrew word for open-air market), Pete Wells declared it a “faster, looser, louder spinoff of Shuka,” the Soho restaurant from the same restaurant group run by executive chef and partner Ayesha Nurdjaja.
It’s at Shuka (opened in 2015) where Brooklyn-born chef Ayesha Nurdjaja fostered a fervent following for her modern interpretation of Eastern Mediterranean fare. The 2022 James Beard Award Finalist for Best Chef NY has spent two decades cooking in New York City restaurants, including Lidia Bastianich’s Felidia, Bar Artisanal, Picholine, and Missy Robbins’ A Voce, among others. I was able to make my inaugural visit to Shukette thanks to an invitation from chef Nurdjaja via my dear friend, photographer, and creative partner Ed Anderson, who happened to be crashing on my sofa that week.
The room was indeed loud, but more of an amped-up buzz than an annoying—a mix-tape of the restaurant’s playlist with lively crowd packed into the room accented with the clattering of pans of the open kitchen that runs the length of the room with the earthy fragrance of charcoal and fire perfuming the whole affair.
We were seated at the counter right at the pass across from the live-fire grill where chef Nurdjaja was running expo, with every dish passing before her for inspection receiving a finishing touch—a sprinkle of herbs, a scattered shower of flaky salt, or a squirt of golden olive oil from her ever-present squeeze bottle at her side.
The extensive menu is broken out into sections including When You Dip, I Dip, Rip This (bread), The Shuk (vegetable-forward salads and sides), Al Ha’Esh (wood-fired mains), Accessories (sauces and accompaniments), and Soft Serve. As a frequent solo diner I’ll have to find someone to join me the next time I stop by Shukette because it’s really made for sharing and that’s the best way to tackle the menu. We admittedly had some help navigating the menu when Nurdjaja eased us into the evening by suggesting we pick out a few must-haves and she would then send out a selection of bread and dips to get us started.