Inner courtyard

YAO (Wall Street)

RESTAURANTS • First Person

I didn’t expect to enter YAO, an elegant Cantonese restaurant that opened earlier this year, through a micro-lobby of a Courtyard by Marriott, but vertical ascension works in Hong Kong and Tokyo, so why not in the (aggressively vertical) Financial District? And anyway, YAO is a tenant of the hotel, not an F&B supplier; there’s nary a waffle machine nor mealy apple to be found in its high-ceilinged, warmly lit second-floor dining room, where tangerine leather banquettes abut floor-to-ceiling windows.

Yao is the second restaurant from Guangzhou natives Thomas Tang and chef Kenny Leung, the team behind August Gatherings, which has been serving precise versions of classic Cantonese fare with subtle flourishes on Canal Street since 2019. YAO shares the commitment to classic Cantonese food, with a distinct upgrade across the board: beverage program, decor, service, and food. Across the menu’s many categories (dim sum, soups, signature proteins that require 24 hours’ notice), there are truffles, oysters, abalone, noodles tossed in bone marrow, and sous-vide meats and birds.

YAO’s signature cocktails, while mostly sweet, include unusual flourishes like black tea-infused rye whiskey and baiju, a sorghum-based Chinese spirit. The compact wine list is relatively heavy on NV Champagne, Bordeaux, and California cabernets, plus a half-dozen Chinese wines and sakes. Also in play: A thoughtfully-curated tea list.

We ate an amuse of gently pickled radishes while reading the menu, which offers some of the same straightforward Cantonese classics found at August Gatherings — pork xiao long bao, shrimp dumplings, steamed sea perch with pickled cabbage — while making room for new offerings befitting the Wall Street environs.

We asked the manager, Henry, to assemble a suitable order for two, which included a rich and tingly lobster mapo tofu, with the crustacean expertly cracked but left in the shell for great visuals and minimal messiness. At Henry’s suggestion, we spooned some of the tofu sauce into an order of tender XO fried rice, which was generously studded with dried scallops. There was also a soy-marinated Berkshire pork shoulder, finished over tableside fire, then sliced and served with pickled ginger. The steamed shrimp dumplings were showered with crisp fried garlic and wontons, pickled tomatoes and dried chile shards. Delicate snow pea leaves came sautéed with chanterelle mushrooms and napped with a velvety Champagne-inflected rice porridge sauce. For dessert, we split a superb Portuguese egg tart — its custard filling was akin to a sweet and rich chawanmushi, cradled by a remarkably flaky crust.

As the Financial District continues to evolve into a residential neighborhood and weekend destination, YAO strikes just the right balance of expense account elegance and Chinatown fun. Get there soon, before the Printemps shopping crowd arrives. –Laurie Woolever

→ YAO (Wall Street) • 213 Pearl St • Daily 1130a-10p • Reserve.