Double crown

Braised pork belly with cilantro, mint and caramel glaze

Photograph: Roxana Marroquin

Double Crown may be the only spot on the newly made-over Bowery that’s as focused on food as it is on eye-candy crowds and attention-seeking decor. While the restaurant—the strip’s first real dining-out anchor—is certainly a stunner, it’s Brad Farmerie’s cooking that’s the real draw. The talented chef, who also runs the kitchen at Public, has fashioned a collection of dishes—a combo of old-school British fare and Asianish street food—that’s just as intriguing as the setting it’s served in. The culinary mash-up reflects the restaurant’s unusual founding conceit: an homage to the glory days of the British Empire in Asia, as filtered through a downtown sensibility.

AvroKo, the city’s most buzzed-about restaurant-design firm, set off on a Far Eastern field trip to overhaul the former Mannahata space, packing it with a shipping container’s worth of treasures—intricately carved soapstone lanterns from India, dusty raj photos, Hong Kong kitsch statues in crystal and porcelain.

A similarly esoteric aesthetic informs the work of the kitchen. Farmerie’s nods to Singapore’s “hawker” food stalls take significant creative and geographic license. If you’ve grazed through the region—the crossroads of Chinese, Malay and Indian influence—not much on his list of prestarters (small, before-appetizer bites) will look very familiar. His sticky pork belly, not Anglo but colonial French, features succulent slices tossed with cilantro, mint and a Vietnamese-style caramel glaze. The evocatively named “pigs in a wet blanket”—spicy-sweet sausages stuffed into lychees—are a delicious bar snack of the chef’s own invention.

The miniature bites are best suited to nibbling while you wait with an icy libation at the front bar for a table. Like the space, the restaurant’s drinks are a mix of throwback authentic and offbeat up-to-date: pitch-perfect Pimm’s Cups and Singapore Slings alongside inspired originals like a gin and ginger-beer cocktail subtly spiked with lemongrass and Thai chilies.

On my first visit, with the restaurant packed to its hip rafters, the kitchen and waitstaff both seemed overwhelmed. A fried whitebait snack, lukewarm and limp, gave way to an awfully long pause before entrées showed up. Though service and food picked up a week later, our waiter was a tad overzealous—pushing à la carte sides on top of the snacks, starters and mains. (Most of it—unfortunately for our waistlines—turned out to be hard to resist.)

Farmerie’s most interesting dishes are updates of the sort of British fare homesick colonials might have pined for after years in the bush. A starter of silky cured Scottish salmon comes artfully matched with sweet-spicy cauliflower and zucchini piccalilli (a mustard-based pickle condiment) and pumpernickel slathered with coconut labna (Middle Eastern crème fraîche). His lush foie gras torchon—gently kissed with tandoori spices and accompanied by Earl Grey–soaked prunes—could’ve kicked off a state dinner in raj-era India. Just as regal was the restaurant’s take on beef Wellington: venison wrapped in a puff pastry lined with mushroom duxelles. Two gorgeous, thick slices—fine flaky crust, the meat a perfect pink—are stacked on the plate, earthy protein offset by cranberry jam and a drizzle of red-currant-laced jus.

Along with Victorian luxury, Farmerie serves high-end renditions of more proletarian food. His savory pub pie—fine rainy-day fare—features a cubed pheasant filling, gently infused with a whisper of licorice. His equally warming bangers and mash delivers a pair of plump boar sausages, rich buttery mash and house-made Wow Wow sauce (a 19th-century port-based U.K. invention).

Desserts keep with the menu’s historical mood, with treacle (in a delicious miniature pecan tartlet), a chocolate trifle (like a very good Jell-O pudding) and creamy rice pudding (stuffed into crisp samosas).

The place invites lingering long after dinner. After we’d scarfed down our sweets one night, we retired to Madam Geneva, the annex bar, reachable for now only by traversing the dining room. If the restaurant’s too packed, make like an insider and head here, where you can access the full menu of starters and snacks. Of course the bar—a destination in its own right—is likely to be completely jammed, too.