
When Manhattan West opens this fall, you might need some help keeping your wood-fired-restaurant chefs straight. Madeline Sperling (not to be confused with Ci Siamo’s Hillary Sterling) will be tending the hearth at Zou Zou’s, the eastern-Mediterranean spot slated to open at the complex’s new Pendry Hotel. Unlike her Italian-inspired neighbor, the 30-year-old North Carolina native will use the grill for dishes that span traditions and influences from Turkey to Egypt and beyond. Before Sperling moved to New York in 2015 to work at Gramercy Tavern and then the NoMad, where she would rise to chef de cuisine, she grew up eating and loving Middle Eastern food.