Get a Closer Look at MIMI’s Intrepid Fare in Greenwich Village

Much of chef Liz Johnson’s cooking at MIMI is genuinely, profoundly intrepid. Though only 25, the peripatetic chef has already racked up a decade of global experience, including stints along the East Coast and in Denmark and Japan. From MIMI’s modest, subterranean kitchen, she deftly modifies classic French cuisine in truly audacious fashion, serving darkly caramelized tarte Tatin with a diner-meatloaf-size slab of blood sausage on the side as a shareable, $16 mid-course. Completely upending (or confirming) your expectations of a Francophile chef, Johnson dives deep into decades- and even centuries-old recipes. Her handwritten daily menu looks like the scrawling of a time traveler gone mad, with herbaceous and mustardy sauce ravigote pooling under hard-seared calf’s brain. — Zachary Feldman