If you’re looking for a culinary experience like no other, I have just the place for you.
New York’s hottest new restaurant is PITH. Located in amongst econ textbooks and an unwashed comforter in a college student’s dorm room at Columbia University, this place has everything. Fine dining. Artisanal cheese. A 21-year-old chef from Massachusetts who’s WAAAAY too talented for his own good.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that all that comes from a disused Stefon Saturday Night Live segment.
But far from being from the pen of John Mulaney or the mouth of Bill Hader, that statement – believe it or not – is one hundred percent accurate.
Far from having Michelin stars or an acclaimed cook behind it, Pith is run out of the Columbia University dorm room of Jonah Reider, a 21-year-old economics student from the town of Newton, Massachusetts with a love of cooking and an idea *just* ridiculous enough for it to work.
Pith seats four diners – and only four – on four nights of the week. Reider takes bookings through Yelp. And he’s full up until Christmas.
Guests sit at a table in the communal space of the dorm room he shares with three others – “My roommates are chill with it” – and eat the five course meals prepared by Reider in the common kitchen of Hogan Hall, where his dorm room resides.
Though his notoriety is apparently rising through the restaurant, Reider isn’t actually turning a profit. Columbia University rules prohibit students from operating for-profit business ventures from their dorm rooms. But Reider gets around this by only charging diners $10 – $20; only ever enough to cover the cost of ingredients.
As for what he’s cooking? House-pickled red kale stalks. Artisanal cheese and olives. Seared lamb chops with smoked paprika. Barley with figs. Snow peas with pancetta and maitake mushrooms.
New York, New York. It’s a hell of a town.
Photo and story via New York Post.
