Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San

The RundownNew York

All About Papa San, New From the Llama San Team

By

Chef Erik Ramirez and restaurateur Juan Correa have plenty more to say. After the success of their New York restaurants Llama San (opened in 2019) and Llama Inn (opened in 2015), they’re now opening Papa San in Hudson Yards on Tuesday, Feb. 18, bringing their Peruvian Nikkei-style cuisine to what they hope will be a new and expanded audience.

Here, the focus leans more toward the Japanese foundations of Nikkei cuisine, inspired by Ramirez’s own Nikkei heritage. Both also took inspiration from various izakayas and trips to Tokyo. You can expect whole chicken yakitori, ceviche with their famous leche de tigre, and St. Louis-style pizzas topped with eel and mushroom cream sauce, proving yet again that Ramirez refuses to be tied down to any one element when it comes to cooking Peruvian cuisine.

We sat down with Correa and Ramirez to find out everything you need to know about Papa San before you visit. P.S. Reservations are open now.

The Resy Rundown
Papa San

  • Why We Like It
    It’s a continuation of the delicious Nikkei-style cuisine chef Erik Ramirez serves at Llama San, now with even more choices on the menu. Expect ceviche, yakitori skewers, and mojitos galore.
  • Essential Dishes
    Vegan ceviche with shiitake mushrooms; the whole chicken experience; and eel pizza.
  • Must-Order Drinks
    Any of the cocktails from the award-winning Tres Monos team, or any one of the sparkling wines from the list that leans quite heavily on them.
  • Who and What It’s For
    Anyone who happens to work (or just be near) Hudson Yards and wants to eat something flavorful, creative, and thoughtful. Or anyone who loves the other Llama restaurants and wants to continue loving this one.
  • How to Get In
    Reservations drop one month in advance.
  • Pro Tip
    Make sure you take a bathroom break. The ones at Papa San are movie themed and perfect for a mirror selfie.
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Chef-partner Erik Ramirez (left) and partner Juan Correa have opened five restaurants together since 2015, three of which are in New York City, one in London, and one in Madrid. Photo by Nico Schinco, courtesy of Papa San
Chef-partner Erik Ramirez (left) and partner Juan Correa have opened five restaurants together since 2015, three of which are in New York City, one in London, and one in Madrid. Photo by Nico Schinco, courtesy of Papa San

1. Papa San is the “fun cousin” of the Llama family of restaurants.

As you may have gathered from the name, Papa San joins the ranks of restaurants within the Llama cinematic universe, which also encompasses Llama Inn in Williamsburg, London, and Madrid, and Llama San in the West Village. This new spot melds some of the best qualities of the two Llamas, Ramirez says.

“We’re trying to create the Llama Inn vibe, [so that] the restaurant feels boisterous, loud, playful, and fun. But the food is a version of the food that Llama San cooks, so it’s a combination of both restaurants,” Ramirez says. “It’s going to evolve into its own thing. At some point it will become its own, but it’ll have a little bit of the restaurants that we started with.”

You’ll still find the Lima-meets-Tokyo-meets-New York cuisine that they’ve popularized at Llama San, with a few new additions and twists. Papa San’s raw section is much more comprehensive, leaning more into izakaya-style dining, and the kitchen features a large custom Char-branded grill unlike any they have at their other restaurants — or any that exist in the region.

“It’s a custom-made grill for us, and it’s the first version of its kind in New York City,” Ramirez says. For the menu, this means a focus on proteins and sauces.

They’re also planning to have even more fun with this restaurant, Correa says. “[The menu is] a little bit unconstrained, and it’s great,” he says. “It’s what we’ve been wanting to do. After we got three stars [at Llama San, from The New York Times] it kind of constrained us to be fine dining. We were always making our heads hurt thinking about the next dish and its evolution. This restaurant is the fun cousin.”

Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San
Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San

2. They’re excited about being in Hudson Yards.

The restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the new Spiral building in Hudson Yards, right in the middle of the neighborhood’s office district. They’re opening Papa San in partnership with Tishman Speyer, the team behind the building.

“We’re super excited about the trust that someone like Tishman had in a Hispanic and Queer-operated business. You rarely see someone backing a group like ours on that scale, so it’s amazing,” Correa says.

With an office building comes office-style amenities, including a bento-box lunch program and happy hours. The team sees the location as an opportunity to spread the reach of their cuisine and culture, and to create a larger audience for the food they cook.

“We cook Peruvian food, you know. Not too many people are familiar with that, especially in a neighborhood like Hudson Yards,” Ramirez says. “It’s going to allow us to reach a demographic that you wouldn’t typically find at Llama Inn in Brooklyn. It’ll give us more reach and more awareness for our cuisine, our culture, and who we are.”

A sneak peek into a pre-opening event inside Papa San. Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San
A sneak peek into a pre-opening event inside Papa San. Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San

3. Inside, it’s all textiles and greenery.

Papa San is also the largest restaurant the team has undertaken, with room for 120 people in the main dining room, a 20-person private dining room, and an 18-seat bar.

Inside, the space, designed by INC Architecture & Design, is a bit “Brutalist” in its architecture, Correa says, which they’ve offset by adding lots of greenery and art. All art on the walls comes from Peruvian artists, including a variety of weavings from Peruvian textile artists.

“It’s going to look great. People are going to notice them, which I think is great because it’s about time we start calling [the weavers] what they are, which is artists. It’s all women weavers from different parts of Peru,” Correa says. “I can’t wait for people to see it.”

You’ll also want to make sure you take a trip to the bathrooms while you’re here, so that you don’t miss the themed movie-centric facilities.

“Juan is a huge movie buff. Each bathroom is orange, or pink, or green, with lighting to match. There are movie posters from [movies like] ‘Pulp Fiction,’ some Iraqi films. It’s going to be really cool,” Ramirez says.

The final element of the vibe comes in the form of the playlist, which Ramirez assures will be “killer.” In the future, they plan on having themed music nights, with selections ranging from country to 90’s rock n’ roll, so that guests can plan their visits around their favorite tunes.

Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San
Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San

4. The cocktail list comes from an all-star team.

The cocktail list here is not-to-be-missed, due in no short part to the fact that it comes from the team behind Buenos Aires’ Tres Monos, currently ranked number seven on the World’s 50 Best Bars list.

“They understood exactly what we wanted in terms of a cocktail program that’s very Latin forward. Erik and I always complain about the obsession that New York has with martinis, when we should be talking about mojitos, margaritas, and pisco sours, for God’s sake,” Correa laughs. “We’re super, super excited about the partnership.”

The wine list is equally as thought out, with 150 selections leaning heavily on white wines and sake. “The wines need to be light. They need to be bubbly. Like we always say, the best pairing for a ceviche is always bubbles,” Correa says.

Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San
Photo by Oriana Rivera, courtesy of Papa San

5. The menu is ambitious in size — and in flavors.

For the menu, Ramirez is sticking with the Peruvian Nikkei-style that’s earned him his flowers at Llama San, with a bit more focus on the Japanese side of that influence than he’s previously done. There are 32 dishes on the menu here, almost double what they serve at Llama San. “It was daunting,” Ramirez says.

The menu is filled with ceviche, onigiri, and skewers, flavored with seasonings that range from Japanese barbecue to aji panca. There’s also a Nikkei chowder, inspired by donabe-fired stews, and a soymilk vanilla soft-serve ice cream, presented in a bento-box style for dessert.

“We’re Peruvian, and we believe that Peruvian cuisine deserves a seat at the table. [We want] to bring more awareness and have people understand what Peruvian cuisine really is. It’s the geography of the country, with all these amazing microclimates, coupled with cultural influences of Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Indigenous, African, and Italian cuisines,” Ramirez says. “To be able to continuously share that, and have people understand how special it is, it’s very important to us. It’s personal.”

Winter donburi. Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San
Winter donburi. Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San

These are the must-order dishes for your first visit.

Ramirez took us through three essential dishes to order, in his own words.

Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San

Ceviche

Winter mushrooms, ponzu, walnuts

“It’s shiitake mushrooms that are grilled. After we grill them, we put them in a bowl, and we lightly steam them, so they soften up again and the grilled flavor permeates the mushrooms.

“Then we make the leche de tigre, which is the base to all our ceviche. It’s a mixture of lime juice and fish stock, but in this case, there’s no fish stock [since it’s a vegan dish]. We’re just going to use water with certain aromatics.

“We blend it up, and then we make our own ponzu. Ponzu has white soy, kombu, vinegar, and mirin, that we cook down, and we combine with the leche de tigre, so it’s grilled shiitake mushrooms and a ponzu leche de tigre. And then we put some kohlrabi for a little freshness and texture, some toasted walnuts that add little nuttiness to the dish, and a little olive oil.

“The reason I chose that dish is because you don’t typically find vegan ceviche. I feel like we’re [one of] the first ones to do vegan ceviche. I’m really proud of it, because it’s like we’ve achieved the flavor that you get from a regular ceviche, but without fish and without the fish stock, and the flavors are just going to be just as explosive.”

Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San

Zensai

Eel pizza, shitake mushrooms, pecorino

“Our executive chef Sergio Nakayoshi is from St. Louis, Mo. Originally, we had the pizza on a traditional Neapolitan-style dough, and he said that we should do a St. Louis-style pizza. It’s like a thin cracker, super crunchy.

“It’s grilled eel with unagi sauce. We make a mushroom cream with dried mushrooms and fresh mushrooms, put cream over them and cook it down. That’s the sauce of the pizza, and then it’s mozzarella and pecorino. It’s grilled eel, with sesame seeds, scallions, and an oil made from shichimi togarashi, the Japanese seven spice.

“The oil is like our spicy element; it’s like our chile oil when you put it on the pizza. There’s a little drizzle of that, and then we put soy sauce in a spritz bottle, spritz the pie, and end it with dashi.

“It’s good. It’s different and it’s fun. Originally, we wanted to have a section called pizza and pasta, because when I went to Tokyo and I went to a couple izakayas, I thought it was so funny and cool at the same time that a lot of them were serving spaghetti and tomato sauce, and it was cold. So, when I came back, I wanted to do a pizza and pasta section, but it just didn’t work on the menu. But from that, the eel ended up staying.”

Photo by Dane Tashima, courtesy of Papa San

Whole Chicken Experience

Bone broth, yakitori, oyakodon, orange slices

“[This dish] is a whole chicken broken down into skewers. We use the bones to make a chicken broth, which is very simple. It’s just chicken bones and chicken feet to give it that nice, rich stickiness. We flavor it with celery, ginger, scallions, habanero, and some basil to perfume it. Then we add perilla seed oil and some tofu.

“The next course is a series of skewers. You have the wing, the drumette, the chicken thigh, the chicken sausage, chicken heart, the gizzards, and the chicken skin. You get to enjoy those, and there will always be a cup of lettuce on the table. You can eat a couple skewers and eat a leaf of lettuce to clean your palate a little bit.

“The next course would be an oyakodon, which is very simple sushi rice and a luscious, soft, cooked omelet that has mirin, dashi, and soy sauce in it. It’s very simple, but it’s so supple and rich and creamy. On the side, we’ll use the chicken breast. We did a version of [the Shanghai-style chicken breast], but with escabeche. We poached the chicken breasts in that, and you eat the nice room temperature chicken breast with the rice on the side.

“The last course, being that it’s winter, is a couple orange slices. If you go to a Chinese restaurant, they’ll wrap up the meal with a fortune cookie and the orange slices, so that’s how we wanted to wrap up our experience.”


Papa San is open daily for lunch from 11:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. beginning on Feb. 18, and reservations are open now. The bar stays open late.