Haema Opens: Menu a Standout in Crowded Hudson Restaurant Scene

Hudson has had quite the restaurant boom this spring. New spaces, new menus, rebrands, a wave of French-leaning kitchens. It's been an exciting season to eat in Columbia County's culinary capital. But when chef Hannah Wong and partner Sarah Jane (SJ) McLaughlin opened the doors to Haema this past weekend, something different arrived.

After a year and a half of pop-ups that built a devoted following across the Hudson Valley and Berkshires (from Delaware Supply to Kinderhook Books, Neverstill Wines to a residency at the Tourists hotel in North Adams) Haema has finally found its permanent home at 538 Warren Street, in the intimate space formerly occupied by Bar Bene. 

Born in South Korea and raised in New Jersey, Wong studied English and biology at Williams College before teaching English in Hong Kong and traveling through Southeast Asia and China—a trip that redirected her life toward the kitchen. After a decade at the top of the New York City restaurant world, working at Gramercy Tavern and Daniel Boulud's db bistro Moderne, she co-launched Van Đa in the East Village, which earned a Michelin Guide recommendation.

The pandemic brought her north, where she built the menu at The Aviary in Kinderhook and served as its founding executive chef. It was there she met McLaughlin, an upper Hudson Valley native and industry veteran who had run the acclaimed New World Bistro Bar in Albany for over a decade. Haema—named for Hippocampus haema, the wild Korean seahorse, and a near-homonym of the Icelandic word heima, meaning "at home"—had been Wong's long-held vision. 

"It was definitely a mix of people who have gone to our pop-ups or been to the Aviary. I think we were surprised by the number of new faces in Hudson," Wong says of opening night. "I think that was the overwhelming sense—that a lot of people, locals, came in and expressed a lot of gratitude and excitement that we're doing here."

What Wong and McLaughlin are offering an eclectic, deeply personal menu of dishes rooted in the street food traditions of East and Southeast Asia, executed with fine-dining precision and grounded in the Hudson Valley farms they've spent years building friendships with, like Blue Star Farm, Tivoli Mushrooms, Kinderhook Farm, Gentle Time Farm, and others whose names feature on the menu.

The Menu

Wong’s inventive and adaptive recipes start making statements about the restaurant’s quality from the opening section. A soy-cured duck egg dusted with togarashi ($5), or ginger-chicken meatballs with a tamarind-green peppercorn sauce ($12) deliver a full flavor argument in two bites. The house kimchi ($5) and a papaya salad with nuoc cham and peanuts ($12) signals that Wong is working from both an emotional and clinical understanding of primary sources.

Move into the plates and the kitchen's ambition comes into full focus. A steelhead trout crudo ($18) arrives with nam jim, fresh strawberries, and coconut. The mushroom larb ($18), made with shredded vegetables, nuoc cham, herbs, rice powder, shallots and pickled Thai chili, is a fully realized vegetarian dish, without concessions. The kale raab ($18) with sesame-tofu sauce and mushroom XO confirms what pop-up regulars have known for a while: Wong approaches her vegetable dishes with the same respect she brings to everything else.

Then there are the noodles, which have been central to Haema's identity since the beginning. Wong has long been a student of hand-pulled noodle-making (and she has taught classes on the technique at HGS Home Chef) and the craft is on full display here. There are silver pin noodles ($26), stir-fried with pork and preserved mustard greens and the hand-pulled noodles ($32) come braised with cumin lamb, cilantro, celery and chili oil, a Northwestern Chinese preparation that you won’t find anywhere nearby. A mushroom version is also available ($28). 

The lemongrass shrimp burger ($21) is a Haema signature that traces back to Wong's days at The Aviary in Kinderhook, cuddled inside a milk bun with sambal mayo, crisp lettuce, pineapple jam, and prawn chips. The five-spice duck leg confit ($38) is the menu's centerpiece: served over duck fat nasi goreng with green garlic and papaya salad, it threads French technique through Indonesian and Southeast Asian flavors. Save room for the pandan coconut panna cotta ($12) with rhubarb and honeycomb. Much of the menu is gluten free. 

Wong explained that the menu is organized to allow for regular changes, seasonal variations, and specials. "We try to structure the menu a certain way to allow us to execute,” Wong says, “We'll often have a lop on the menu, a Thai salad, we'll always have a crudo, we'll always have a burger of some sort, we'll always have a couple bigger entrees, and we'll always have a couple bar snacks and sharing sides. And then within that we're kind of playing around, we're changing ingredients week to week, tweaking, introducing specials."

The beverage program, designed by McLaughlin, is as considered as the food. The cocktail list, including a Lychee Margarita with shiso salt ($14), a Salted Plum Manhattan built on Akashi ume whisky ($16), a Coconut Killah with mezcal, smoked pineapple, and calamansi ($16), maps the same flavor geography as the kitchen.

The wine list skews natural and eclectic, with a Georgian skin-contact white, a rare Lanzarote Diego Seco, bottles from the Loire, Rioja, and Rhone sitting alongside a can of Return Brewing's Westwhere IPA from right here in Hudson. There are two non-alcoholic cocktails and, thoughtfully, non-alcoholic beer from Athletic Brewing. 

Restaurant Renaissance or Oversaturation?

 As for Hudson's increasingly crowded restaurant landscape, Wong and McLaughlin seemed unbothered. "Just having a town that has a buzz about restaurants and a food scene is better for all of us." McLaughlin says. Wong was direct about what she believes Haema offers that nothing else here does: "I feel like we have a unique perspective that we're offering, and that seems to be consistently the feedback that we're hearing."

Haema is open Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 9pm. Haema is at 538 Warren Street, Hudson.