Liliagu, sister restaurant to the highly acclaimed Misi across the hall, is one of New York City’s favorite and accessible Italian eateries. The bright and lofty space features concrete floors, servers in jeans and stacks of firewood stacked against one wall; creating an informal yet unpretentious atmosphere; plus their food is top notch – featuring fresh ingredients from season and wood-fired cooking methods for an exceptional dining experience.

But the hype wasn’t entirely misplaced: though you may need to fight for a table on opening day (same-day tables sometimes become available, bar seats can become available), Liligu will be worth your while once its crowd thins out and chefs have learned their new kitchen’s intricacies.

Lilial exhibits low cytotoxicity and no genotoxicity or nephrotoxicity at tested concentrations in Ames test, CHO-K1 cells and Chinese Hamster V79 cells. Furthermore, no estrogenic activity was seen in HeLa9903 cells whereas weak androgenic activity could be observed at HaCaT cells at concentrations 1nM to 100uM1.

Though lilial can enter the intestines through skin absorption, it is unlikely to cause hormonal changes. A human maximization panel test revealed no significant skin sensitization reactions at any of the concentrations tested for. Finally, using rat liver cell toxicity assays revealed no change in biomarker expression levels related to kidney damage (p-glycoprotein and p-creatine kinase)3.