Resorts World New York City in South Ozone Park reopened RW Prime, the casino’s fine dining restaurant, with a new look and taste this past week.
Along with a newly renovated space that includes contemporary decor and carefully curated lighting, RW Prime will now offer a reimagined “East Meets West” menu that connects both American and Asian cuisine.
This new vision for RW Prime marks the first high-end Asian cuisine restaurant in the casino since the closing of Genting Palace in 2016. Since then, the team at Resorts World New York City has recognized a need to bring back this offering and on an even higher scale.
“We saw that as something we were lacking,” said Michelle Stoddart, the casino’s vice president of community development. “We wanted to cater to our Asian clientele.”
To conceptualize the new “East Meets West” menu, Resorts World brought on Keith Hernandez as the new executive chef for the restaurant. Hernandez, who grew up in Queens, will work with Chef Yiu Chuen Pang in bringing the restaurant’s new cuisine to prospective diners.
On the West Menu, guests can choose from a wide array of flavors from appetizers including a spicy Tuna Tartare and savory “Wedge” salad to main courses like the 22 ounce Ribeye served with loaded potatoes and brussel sprouts or 10 ounce Short Rib Beef served “Galbi Style” with kimchi, pickled daikon, and gem lettuce in a sweet and smoky marinade.
The East Menu takes the Asian-inspired tastes even further with offerings that include a colorful Lobster Fried Noodle dish, sweet yet savory Garlic Crispy Chicken, and the restaurant’s signature Genting Fried Rice, featuring abalones, scallops, prawns, pine nuts, and green onions.
For seafood lovers, other offerings include with the West’s Roasted Halibut with clams, saffron Israeli couscous, asparagus, roasted tomatoes, tarragon, or perhaps, the East’s most eye-catching dish: the Whole Fried Sea Bass, which comes on the plate from head to fin with its mouth wide open.
The visual excitement of the dishes continue with RW Prime’s dessert menu, which features a sweet Sticky Toffee Pudding cake with a scoop of salted caramel ice cream on the side as well as the pink Raspberry Mousse Cheesecake Dome that gives guests a refreshing, sherbert-like bite for a nice summer vibe.
With these menus, Hernandez hopes to please the palates of the casino’s high demographic of Asian guests, as well as attract a younger crowd to the restaurant.
“We’re trying to mix up both, have the best of both worlds here to offer a little bit for everyone to experience,” Hernandez said. “For me, there’s nothing like that here in Queens so I definitely wanted to bring a little taste of where I was working before in New York City.”
A chef for almost 15 years, Hernandez got his start working for Sodexo at Pfizer. After working at the Gramercy Park Hotel, he then headed to the Dominick Hotel in SoHo and worked his way up to Executive Sous Chef.
In the years that followed, Hernandez shifted to The Village Club at Lake Success and the Paramount Country Club for catering before joining the culinary team at the New York Marriott Marquis in the heart of Times Square, where he led the hotel’s mass production kitchen. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hernandez began at-home meal prepping, an opportunity that saw him delivering meals across the Tri-State area and led to opportunities to work with Michelin Star Chef Diego Muñoz at the Public Hotel’s “POPULAR” restaurant.
Now, as the new executive chef and creative mind behind RW Prime for the last two months, Hernandez looks forward to more projects to come with Resorts World New York City, which will include revamping some of the casino’s food court offerings.
“There’s a lot more on my plate to do,” Hernandez joked. “It’s definitely a new experience.”
RW Prime is open Mondays through Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and Sundays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
