Creola is chef Lana Lagomarsini’s five-course tasting menu restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Named after her grandmother, it explores culinary traditions across the Black diaspora.
Inside, the small dining room combines exposed brick, patterned wallpaper, and a dark blue velvet banquette beside the front window. A photograph and a painted portrait of Lagomarsini’s grandmother hang on the walls. The relaxed, supper club atmosphere draws on her experience as a private chef and pop-up host. “I have a background in fine dining, so it feels only natural to utilize those techniques,” she says. “But I have always wanted to utilize them to highlight flavors that you don’t generally see in fine dining settings.”
The changing menu costs $125 per person, with an optional $65 wine pairing. Dishes have included oxtail pâté en croûte and roasted duck breast with gumbo sauce and dirty rice arancini. Her potlikker consommé, which she served on season 22 of Top Chef, also featured on Creola’s debut menu.
“It reminds me of my grandmother. I could only eat collard greens at her house because my mom doesn’t like them. It is also inspired by American history and my ancestors, who were slaves in the country, who sometimes didn’t even have anything other than potlikker and cornbread to eat,” she says. “Then you have a really fine dining technique of consommé and slow-roasted trout, and all of that comes together to make a dish that is very me.”
