Now that my wife Jun and I have lived in the DC metro area since 2021, we have to be very judicious when picking a restaurant to dine at when we visit New York City. In picking the restaurants, we found ourselves prioritizing our old favorites back in our NYC days instead of hot new openings, as we would rather go to a proven place we are familiar with and where we know the chef and the staffs. One such restaurant is Aska where Swedish chef Fredrik Berselius is continuing to deliver excellent New Nordic cuisine. We made every efforts to visit Aska at least once a year (including during the pandemic years), and most recently visited the restaurant last month during a short weekend trip to NYC. We have known chef Fredrik for a while now (in fact, for almost ten years since 2017 when Jun and I braved through the heavy snow to dine at the restaurant), and he warmly greeted us on this visit. My last review of Aska was from 2019, so I figured I would refresh my view at the restaurant this time.

I guess I would preface by pointing out that Aska’s tasting menu hasn’t dramatically changed in the past several years. There is a core of signature dishes that has remained the staple of the restaurant, with a few variations seasonally. We probably might have visited the restaurant a little more often had we known the menu would go through more dramatic changes. That said, the level of execution has also been remarkably consistent over time. We have seen the kohlrabi snack (compressed with the essence of linden leaf oil and linden flower) multiple times already, but on this particular night Jun noticed how impressively crispy the kohlrabi tasted. There were also a couple of new dishes we had not encountered this time, like a rye pancake with vendace roe marinated in lilac vinegar, brown crab and custard of crab brain (seemingly a Scandinavian version of chawanmushi egg custard) and, one of my favorite dishes of the night, a delightful bite of kingfish, Madagascar caviar and smoked eel.

The grilled tail of langoustine from Norway with red gooseberry, another longtime stalwart in Aska’s menu over the past few years, was as good as we had remembered; I won’t hesitate to say this langoustine is probably at least one of my top three in the world, with flawless texture. When it comes to texture, you also can’t beat the hake. We have seen slightly different variations of this fish over time, and this time the beautifully plated dish with caviar and sauce made with Swedish dark beer and flowering dill was no less exquisite. My favorite dish of the night was venison with chanterelles and wild herbs. I think restaurants could certainly use more venison in their menus, especially when a restaurant like Aska comes out with this wonderfully tender meat that won’t make you miss Wagyu beef. The desserts at Aska also displayed the same level of precision and high execution from the savory dishes. Another new dish of the night, a pre-dessert dish of thinly sliced pear with black cardamom and brown butter quickly won us over, and the main dessert of caramelized whey and milk sorbet was also delightful without overwhelmingly sweet.

Getting a reservation at Aska is not as ridiculously difficult as some of the hottest tables in NYC (the restaurant is also open on Sundays these days) so long as you plan a few weeks in advance and are ready to place a deposit of $375 per person up front. The dark, minimalist dining room of the restaurant has always been one of my favorite places to dine with Jun, and the service level at Aska also didn’t slip, either. The wine list at Aska continues to be very strong, and this time we enjoyed a bottle of rare Champagne which I couldn’t see anywhere on retail in the U.S. to complement the meal quite nicely. In this day and age when star chefs succumb to the temptation of expanding their restaurants empires, chef Fredrik’s single operation at Aska seems like an outlier. He didn’t seem to have any desire to open another spinoff of Aska, and we really appreciated that consistency and longevity from the restaurant. It’s been going strong for close to ten years since moving to the current location following the original days inside a cafe in Williamsburg, and will continue to be a model for a restaurant Jun and I would love to visit again and again.  

KenScale: 8.75/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.75/10)

Address: 47 S 5th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249

Website: https://www.askanyc.com/

Reservation on OpenTable