Counter Culture

Last week, Caper took over U Omakase in Greenpoint for an underground cooking competition/dinner party—our first event since our March launch party—and the U-shaped omakase counter was packed with some of New York’s most plugged-in food and hospitality names.

The room had weight to it: There was Kitchen Fund’s Greg Golkin; Elly Truesdell, founder and partner at New Fare Partners (the VC firm going all-in on food and beverage CPGs); restaurateur and club owner Ariel Arce (Tokyo Record Bar, Heroes); Friend of Chef’s Keith Durst and Talia Berman.

Mercer Street Hospitality's John McDonald sat next to Fausto’s Joe Campanale at one end of the counter, near Strange Delight’s Anoop Pillarisetti, who was next to Sue Chan, founder of buzzy hospitality experiential agency Care of Chan.

Also there: Resy’s Natasha Miller and Dana Fraser, Blackbird’s Andrew Wingrove, Mastercard’s Mannie Thompson. It was the kind of room that reminds you how vibrant—and connected—the hospitality world is.

The format? A proper cooking competition, designed in partnership with Adam Gray of Burnt Orange Honey, the hospitality-centric media and events company behind some of New York’s most talked-about underground culinary throwdowns. 

The evening’s competition brought together four up-and-coming culinary talents, divided into two teams. Leading the first team was Jing Wen Ng, a Singapore-born chef who cut her teeth as Sous Chef at The Modern before becoming Chef de Cuisine at the Michelin-starred Noksu, where her signature style of bold Asian flavors meets modern French technique earned her widespread acclaim. Alongside her was Gilberto Argueta, a born-and-raised New Yorker who got his start as a line cook under Jing’s mentorship at The Modern, went on to hone his skills at Crown Shy, and is now mastering the art of meat as a tournant at The 86.

Captaining the second team was Vijay Bhardwaj, who trained in five-star hotel kitchens in New Delhi before becoming Chef de Cuisine at Dhamaka—the restaurant the New York Times crowned the #1 new restaurant in New York when it opened in 2021. Rounding out Bhardwaj’s team was Eric Valdez, Executive Chef and partner at Naks, the Unapologetic Foods Filipino concept named to Esquire’s Best New Restaurants in America in 2024.

The ingredients: Halibut, Ibérico secreto, and American wagyu picanha for the first two courses, with dessert left wide open. 

The rules: Chefs were given a single prompt—backyard BBQ—and asked to interpret what that means through their own cultural lens. To guide the meal, three rules applied: The first course had to be eaten entirely by hand; the main plate was required to include a minimum of five components, specifically two proteins, a vegetable, a sauce, and a garnish; and dessert had to feature at least one frozen element.

The prize: $2,000 for the winning team. 

The room had opinions. The chefs delivered. Again and again and again:

From Ng and Argueta: Fried halibut, grilled cantaloupe, habanero, charred beef tip salsa, mint aioli; soy-marinated beef, fermented shrimp and cantaloupe skin sauce, crispy taro, pork with guava BBQ, chives, beef-fat grilled asparagus; grilled plantain, coconut ice cream, plantain caramel, sunchoke chips.

From Bhardwaj and Valdez: Beef tartare—charred beef in a beef-fat vinaigrette, apple cider reduction, toasted seaweed, smoked cedar; smoked pork biryani, burnt herbs, citrusy coconut milk, roasted garlic, tomato salan, fish raita; Guava kulfi.

And the winner? It was a nailbiter, but in the end chefs Jing Wen Na and Gilberto Argueta pulled it out by a nose. (Although the real winners were those of us lucky enough to eat the dishes.)

Nobody left in a hurry. Well, it was raining, and Komos XO was being poured after dinner. But when they did leave, they walked out with a hot-off-the-presses Caper hat to keep their heads dry. Because a new company isn’t complete until there’s a logo on a hat. Right?