In Good Taste
Asian flavors meet new American cuisine at Morningside’s Whiskey Bird
After meeting during their freshman year at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and forming an instant friendship, Anthony Vipond and Chef Chad Crete began throwing weekly dinner parties for their friends. “With so many late-night cooking sessions, farmers market runs and entertaining together, it was only natural that we dreamed of opening our own restaurant someday,” says Crete. “After a life-changing trip to Asia in 2015, we decided to start making that dream a reality.”
Enter Whiskey Bird, the duo’s welcoming Morningside restaurant at which Vipond serves as general manager and Crete as executive chef. The layout emphasizes the bar and kitchen, “almost as if you’re walking into our own open-concept kitchen as a guest in our home,” says Crete. The cuisine, a combination of Asian and American flavors, is equally as comfortable—think dishes such as yakitori, Korean rice cakes, crispy brussels sprouts and Hong Kong sliders. “After our travels throughout Asia, we wanted to find a way to translate some of the amazing dishes and flavors so that they would be approachable but still fun and unique,” says Crete. “There are a lot of Asian ingredients and cooking techniques that parallel those of other cultures, and we wanted to bridge those gaps and create dishes that are unexpected, uninhibited and unforgettable.”