Piora

Piora is a modern American restaurant offering an extensive wine list, and elegant surroundings. Piora isn’t large. The tables are leather-topped, as if you were about to sit down for a hand of whist, and they are hemmed in so snugly that when servers converged to set down three plates at once they looked like they were playing Twister. Design tricks make the room look larger than it is, though, and you don’t notice the tight quarters once dinner begins. Chris Cipollone’s cooking dips into Korean cuisine with crunchy, charred octopus in gochujang, the fermented chile paste. But before you file it under Asian fusion, be aware that the one thing you must do at Piora is eat some pasta, which can have complex, deeply layered flavors.