Zoli

Zoli is a restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from chef Ned Baldwin, who trained through sculpture and an MFA from Yale before running a professional kitchen.

Ned Baldwin came to cooking sideways: through sculpture, an MFA from Yale, and years of making things before he ever ran a professional kitchen. That background shapes everything at Zoli, his new restaurant on the Amant arts campus in East Williamsburg. Where most chefs working inside a museum lean into the prestige of the setting, Baldwin leans away from it: his food at Zoli is pared down to the point of confidence: roasted monkfish, clams with fermented black bean butter, dandelion greens with chile and soy that never get made the same way twice. The menu changes daily, the kitchen will eventually host chef residencies, and the room itself is anchored by an apocalyptic aquarium installation by Pierre Huyghe: fish tanks that have nothing to do with what you're eating. Baldwin's question at Zoli is the same one he's been asking since Houseman opened a decade ago in Hudson Square: what does honest, clear-headed cooking look like when it stops performing?