The bright, stylish interior of Good Night in  Woodstock evokes the glamor of old Hollywood.

Plates of shareable Southeast Asian fare, vivid with fresh herbs and bold flavors characterizes the food at Good Night in Woodstock. It is a sibling of the Nordic-Asian-fusion restaurant Silvia, also in Woodstock.

The bright, stylish interior of Good Night in  Woodstock evokes the glamor of old Hollywood.

Tempura blowfish tails with wild shrimp and shishitos have a chile glaze at Good Night in Woodstock.

The bright, stylish interior of Good Night in  Woodstock evokes the glamor of old Hollywood.

Good Night, from the same owners at the nearby restaurant Silvia, took over a former gallery space in Woodstock.

Duck breast at Good Night in Woodstock is served with pancakes, pickled celery, cucumber and pear, and fig hoisin sauce.

Walnut larb at Good Night in Woodstock offers a vegetarian alternative to the familiar meat salad with lettuce wraps.

Grapefruit panna cotta at Good Night in Woodstock. 

To talk with chef Doris Choi is to be swept into a passion for feeding people, a love of design and a drive to create, innovate and, when necessary, kill off ideas that don’t execute well. The chef behind Silvia, the Woodstock restaurant she opened with her sister Betty Choi and their husbands, comes across as more certain and in control of every aspect of Good Night, their new venture open for a month in a gallery down the road.

If Silvia anchors the town’s center with its dark Nordic exterior inspired by a trip to Iceland, the partners embraced the lofty bone structure of a white, light-soaked gallery as the blank canvas for Good Night. Working with the same interior designer, they envisioned something more feminine. And boy, do they deliver. 

After surviving the pandemic hit to the restaurant industry, Choi wanted to create something beautiful that focused on the future, on food, family and being together: a great experience and a “good night” — the genesis of the name. With that, Good Night departs from the neat, Nordic-Asian lines of Silvia by bringing in more curves than 1950s Hollywood, with a sweeping bar and endless plush banquettes upholstered in dusk burnt sienna. Unlike Silvia, the Good Night kitchen is out of sight, perhaps leading a retreat from yesterday’s open kitchens the way Gigi Hadid is bringing back skinny eyebrows. Feathered chandeliers spill warmth over soft marble tables with smooth bullnose edges; massive leafy plants extend a deco, Hemingway vibe. Usher in the louche starlets and smoking jackets. They'll fit right in.

Instead, the steady crowd is far from dressy. Locals are turning out in droves: Families dine with young children, friends in jeans and beanie hats sip cocktails or split bottles of wine. The food is relaxed, too, mixing highbrow and low on a menu that sashays from classic dim sum pork dumplings and slippery hand-cut noodles to grass-finished steak, dry-aged in house.

Though Silvia is known for rustic, primal cooking, with an active fermentation program deployed across cocktails and plates and vegetables kissed by ember and fire, presentation has always been meticulously detailed. At Good Night, food is less pretty under dim light, our table soon jostling bowls of white rice with tangled shaved beef, red pepper and silky leeks in a Thai basil beef stir fry, and green coconut curry hiding assorted fruits de mer under thick cream. It’s filling food to spoon and share, with a parade of spices in notes of lemongrass and lime leaf, prickles of chile and a brass section of basil, perilla and cilantro galore. 

Show me a plate not improved by a throng of fresh herbs. Good Night, speaking my love language, serves up a stack of crisp tempura blowfish tail, wild shrimp and blistered shishitos glazed in sticky chile, dusted with crushed peanuts and buried under whole branches of Thai basil. Those who know Choi had a prominent start in the raw vegan scene will recognize her banging walnut larb, nothing short of an upgrade on traditional pork for its fantastic, texturally firm ways, minced and mixed with toasted rice, thrumming with lemongrass and chile. Wrap the lot in pretty lettuce leaves — a choice of Bibb, endive and speckled pink radicchio — and top it with herbs for a party line bop on a plate.  

Naturally, we kick off with cocktails: a juicy Grapefruit Lycee Tonic that is more Fresca than G&T but refreshing and bright, and a Kumquat Blossom that fuses smoky mezcal with almond orgeat, kumquat and bitters, computing as intelligent over complex. Classics make sense here. Who wouldn’t want a Jungle Bird or Boulevardier in this scene? The Banana Daiquiri isn’t a frosty poolside sensation but a Cuban original updated with banana chip bourbon and aquafaba for a lightly frothed head. Save the creamy Sake Coconut Colada for dessert.  

Wine can be hard to pair with Asian food, but with Silvia’s sommelier also curating Good Night’s picks, the list boasts natural gems from pét nat to Georgian and Slovenian skin-contact wines. If I lived closer, I’d belly up to the bar weekly for a plate of blistered shishitos and a bottle to share.

Open only a month, decisions are still being made. Choi expresses disappointment that her confit chicken and Hainanese rice dish won’t stay. Choi describes it as “the very essence of chicken” thanks to small birds from a local firm, gently sous vided and then confited. Given the chance, she would place it as the first dish on a tasting menu for the unadulterated flavor of real chicken — “one note, but more-ish” — before amping up increasingly complex flavors. But Choi lets it go in the same way she has evolved through raw vegan and Asian, defying labels or rigid authenticity. She ends the thought simply: “I’m getting better at not limiting myself.” 

I’m taken by the simplicity of five-spice duck breast, seared and arranged in petals on a plate with thin pancakes we fill with fig hoisin sauce and pickled celery, cucumber and pear, the pickle juice playing off sweet, crisp fruit. Only a side of hand-cut mung bean noodles in Sichuan-black vinegar misses acid or saltier brightness, and a grapefruit panna cotta dessert, while tasty, is not fully set in its tall mason jar. A ramekin might be better for the job. 

There’s more for the curious: stir-fried yuba with lotus root, bok choy and Sichuan miso; local mushroom and crispy egg noodles with pea leaf; a whole crispy snapper to share. I’ll need to return for the pandan coconut ice cream, as it was sold out the night we were there. 

Those who furiously tell me to “write about the food, not people or furniture” don’t understand that dinner is theater, the setting the stage, the service part of the night. The staff at Good Night deserve a mention of their own: professional, friendly, on point. I don’t know who’s shucking the Sassy Malpeques — not likely a dedicated shucker — but the oysters are impeccably clean, no shards, neat bellies, overflowing with oceanic brine. With them, a thick coconut cream whipped with chile and lime leaf is a revelation in place of standard mignonette. Good Night is exactly this: Casual enough to be comfy any night and stylish enough to deserve its name. 

Address: 15 Rock City Road, Woodstock  Hours: 5 to 9 p.m. Monday, Thursday and Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Price: Appetizers, $14 to $21; plates, $26 to $46; sides, $6 to $13; cocktails, $15; wine, $12 to $17 by the glass, $48 to $68 by the bottle Info: 518-684-7373 and goodnightwoodstock.com

Award-winning food and drinks writer and longtime TU dining critic, Susie Davidson Powell, has covered the upstate dining scene for a decade. She writes weekly reviews, a monthly cocktail column and the biweekly e-newsletter The Food Life. Susie has received national awards for food criticism from the Society of Features Journalism and served as a 2020 James Beard Awards judge for New York state. You can reach her at thefoodlifeTU@gmail.com and follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefoodlife.co