THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Hea Restaurant

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Hea Restaurant Restaurant Review:

Raucous pan-Asian restaurants with moody, colored lighting abound in the East Village. But Hea, on a rather unloved stretch of Third Avenue, represents version 2.0 of these evergreen spots. First, the restaurant is spread over two floors, with a lounge downstairs, and a sushi bar and a traditional dining room up top. The kitchen manages to pick and choose from Japanese, Malaysian, Thai and Chinese cuisines successfully, creating a menu using the best of each. Starters are the most delicate and interesting offerings: squid salad comes with green papaya and chili-lime dressing, the crunchy prawn toast arrives with sweet chili sauce and the warm tomato salad is greatly improved by pieces of crispy mackerel. Entrées are a bit less inventive. Black cod is drizzled with a sweet miso glaze; the wok-roasted pork belly isn’t at a Momofuku level but is still a winner; the striped bass with kimchi spätzle sounds like it should be a mess, but is actually quite inventive. Alas, the weak link here is the sushi, which does not benefit from the peripatetic treatment the rest of the dishes receive.