Sono opens in East Village with Korean-Italian pasta

Yang’s path explains why the place already feels personal. He came to the United States in 2010 to study at the Culinary Institute of America, joined Gramercy Tavern in 2012, spent nearly eight years at Maialino, helped reopen Oiji during the pandemic, and was part of the opening team for Oiji Mi, which earned a Michelin star. Before Sono, he served as executive chef and partner at DDOBAR. He has described the project as 70 percent Korean and 30 percent Italian, and the name Sono means “I am” in Italian, which fits the way the restaurant reads as a self-portrait rather than a concept cooked up for novelty.

The clearest example is the bottarga pasta with Korean zucchini, pollock roe, nori and saffron butter. It is not just a flavor mash-up. The dish uses the salt-and-brine depth of bottarga and the seaweed note of nori to echo one another, while saffron butter gives the pasta the kind of richness that lets Korean ingredients sit inside an Italian frame without getting flattened. Early menu details also point to a chitarra with saffron and yellow-zucchini purée finished with myeongran, an oxtail fettuccine that bridges cacio e pepe and Korean ox-bone soup, and a clam linguine that riffs on kal guksu. That is the kind of menu that asks diners to think about texture as much as flavor: cut, chew, broth, sauce, and the way handmade noodles carry all of it.

The drinks list is built to match, with house-made or house-infused soju alongside wine, cocktails, beer and zero-proof options. The room itself is set up as a contemporary but warm trattoria with Korean touches, and the original plan called for 12 tables, 24 seats and a 10-seat bar. Proposed hours were 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and until 1 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, which gives the East Village another late-night dining room in a neighborhood already packed with Korean, Italian and other global kitchens.