This Eel Pizza Is Actually Worth The Trek To Hudson Yards

Eel pizza at Papa San in Hudson Yards.

The perfect order at Papa San, a Peruvian Japanese party from the Llama San team in the Spiral  

Outside, the night was miserable, torrents of cold rain blowing sideways up Tenth Avenue in Hudson Yards, inside-outing umbrellas and soaking folks as they scurried to their Ubers. It was the sort of NYC night that, honestly, you just kind of wish you could be at home: warm, dry, and cozy on your couch.

Yet, right off the lobby of an enormous new office tower a developer is trying to get everyone to call “the Spiral,” there was a rager going on, albeit of the business-casual variety.

Inside, a somewhat shambling space that runs down 34th Street toward the river, the wrap-around bar was bumping, the long open kitchen buzzed with a dozen or so chefs cranking out plates, and by 6:30 p.m. or so, it seemed like all 150 or so seats were filled, including a couple of eight-top banquettes.

This is Papa San, a Nikkei-style izakaya from Juan Correa and chef Erik Ramirez, the duo behind Llama San. The newest Peruvian Japanese restaurant opened in February and is becoming an after-work go-to as well as a bonafide destination restaurant in a neighborhood that didn’t even really exist just a few years ago.

Correa and Ramirez opened their first spot in 2015 on a then-barren stretch of Williamsburg by the BQE. A second location of Llama San followed in the West Village, as well as a few international ventures in places like London and Madrid.

About three years ago mega-developer Tishman Speyer began wooing the team to bring some of that hotspot spark to the Spiral, their 66-story behemoth in Hudson Yards. The restaurant “will morph into something that belongs in this space,” Ramirez told Eater, “but we always stay true to ourselves.”

Start with a drink: cerveza, wine, “artisanal sake,” or an adventurous $18 cocktail developed with the team from Buenos Aires’s bar Tres Monos (Mango No. 5: sake, mango, black garlic, beer; Golden Curry: Toki whisky, vanilla, curry aji amarillo, salsa tres chiles). But if Papa San’s going to lure us back to this insta-neighborhood corporate tower, the kitchen better be fire as well.

The menu from Ramirez and executive chef Sergio Nakayoshi is by far the largest one of all their restaurants and, like its Llama predecessors, Papa San is not cheap. Here’s some guidance for a best-of-the-best perfect order.

Dining solo

Blue crab maki

Big, lively rooms make for ideal solo dining spaces, and there’s so much going on at Papa San that you definitely won’t feel lonely eating at either the bar up front or at one of the stools in front of the open kitchen. Start with either the messy blue crab maki ($24) drenched in a zingy togarashi sauce or, for something a bit lighter and more bracing, the razor clam and lychee ceviche ($20), a dish I’m pretty sure isn’t served anywhere else in town.

Up next, definitely get the eel pizza ($28), a fully satisfying umami bomb that co-stars shiitake, pecorino, and a slightly sweet sesame sauce. The dough is squishy, but you can still eat these four-bite slices by hand, and the writhing sea of bonito flakes covering the pie is a surefire conversation starter when this beast hits the bar. It’s alive!

Dinner for two

Skewers from the “Whole Chicken Experience” Chicken breast and oyakodon

Here’s where I get to talk about what will likely be one of my favorite dishes of the year, the Papa San “Whole Chicken Experience” for two. Yes, it costs $90 — an upsell on chicken we’re seeing around New York — but it features, like, eight or nine very different ways to eat a bird and the whole thing is fun as hell.

First, you get a cup of chicken bone broth, thick and fatty and exactly as rich as you’d expect (to avoid overdosing, sip on this throughout your journey). Then comes the centerpiece, a platter with five pairs of differently-seasoned skewers, including funky chunks of thigh, bone-in wings with numbing peppercorns, chewy bits of skin, whole rows of hearts, and a dense and intense mini-sausage. This is served with a bowl of lightly-dressed lettuce leaves to palate cleanse as you make your way around the items. It’s a genius idea Ramirez said he got from a yakitori house in Tokyo called Birdland.

You’re not done yet though! The chicken breast arrives next: poached, sliced, and smothered in a super tangy escabeche, so the whole thing is basically pickled. This is paired with a generous serving of oyakodon, a soft, sweet omelet plopped atop a mound of sushi rice. The finale arrives in a few lovely wedges of orange: a shot of citrus is more than welcome after all that bird.

It’s a lot, so pace during the pre-chicken part of the meal. A pair of ceviches should do the trick: the invigorating shitake in ponzu one ($16) is terrific, and the mackerel and banana combo ($18), all buried under warm short-grained rice, is even better.

Three-, four-, and more-tops

Cacio e pepe udon noodles

Sweetbreads with chimichurri

Larger parties should also plan on chicken experience, but you can front-load your meal with some of the menu’s heartier starters as well. In addition to the eel pizza and crab maki, consider Papa San’s superb sweetbreads ($24), which Ramirez said they soak in milk overnight before slowly grilling and rolling them into tight little mounds. An ample dollop of strong chimichurri tops things off. And the crowd-pleasing cacio e pepe udon noodles ($24) littered with spicy wok-fried squid, will also please your party.

Do you still have room for dessert? We sadly did not, but I bet that purple, Peruvian, chicha morada kakigori ($12), paired with rice pudding, would have been nice.