Rooster & Owl

If you think cacio e pepe has been done to death, you haven’t tried the Roman pasta reinvented as a pear salad with shavings of tête de moine cheese at Carey and Yuan Tang’s laid-back dining room. The $105 prix fixe—there are four dish choices for each of the four courses—is filled with such brilliant tweaks. Braised short rib over congee gets a jolt of fish-sauce gastrique, and even a simple sauté of roasted mushrooms with Shaoxing wine and butter had us talking about it for days.