Rountree, who is head chef at Soho restaurant Kiln, and Smith, head chef at Smoking Goat – both of which are part if the Super 8 group of restaurants, will join co-owner Gaz Herbert and head chef Scott McKay at their Lower East Side restaurant for a two-night collaboration.
Running on 23 and 24 April, the collaboration will see the quartet present a five-course menu shaped by the early-spring harvest from farms across America’s Northeast.
Dishes will include a som tam-style salad; pork sausage ‘al pastor’; and fish crudo with monkfish liver mole. The main course will feature lobster and beef hang lay, served with sticky rice and seasonal greens, and dessert will be a mango and coconut-lime soft serve and cinnamon caramel banana.
The five-course tasting menu is priced at $95 per person, excluding drinks, with three sittings each evening.
The collaboration marks the second time UK-based chefs have been welcomed to Comal to cook in the past six months. In October last year Indian restaurant group Kricket was involved in a two-night collaborative dinner at the New York restaurant.
The collaboration also reconnects Mexico City-born Herbert with London, where he previously cooked at The River Café and Ikoyi, and where he met McKay.
“Having the Kiln team in New York is a real pleasure,” says Herbert. “Both kitchens work closely with bold heat and the seasons, and we’re excited to see how spring produce comes to life across our collaborative menu at Comal.”
Comal opened in June 2025 on Forsyth Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and takes its name from the comal, a traditional flat griddle found in kitchens across Central and South America.