How Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha Made a Perfectly New York Restaurant

Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha live next door. We share a wall. I live in fear that they can hear me singing to my cat, but they’re not home much. They’re too busy these days. Burns and Ha, who first got attention with their pop-up Ha’s Đăc Biêt, are the chefs and owners of a little restaurant on the Lower East Side called Ha’s Snack Bar. It’s packed every single night. I’ll always admit bias, but in my humble opinion, they’re making some of the most flavorful and exciting food in New York City, and perhaps even beyond it. Their menu borrows from Vietnam, Paris, London, maybe even a bit of California, but there’s a certain underlying attitude that’s distinctly New York. They’re rock stars but also workaholics who are preparing to open their second restaurant in one calendar year, tentatively dubbed Bistrot Ha (good luck getting a reservation). To learn more, I made the trip next door with McDonald’s breakfast and mimosas, and we talked outlet malls, bloody steaks, makeup tutorials, famous guests, and their plans for the future.

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THURSDAY 10:10 AM MAY 1, 2025 NYC

J LEE: Thanks for having me, guys.

SADIE MAE BURNS: Thanks for bringing breakfast. We should do this more often.

J LEE: Do you do sausage or bacon McMuffins?

BURNS: Sausage.

J LEE: I’m a big sausage person but there are some people who ride or die for bacon.

BURNS: Breakfast sausage is one of my favorite things in the entire world.

J LEE: Oh, you brought HP Sauce. 

BURNS: [Laughs]

J LEE: British! I don’t know if I’ve ever tried it.

BURNS: Honestly, I don’t love it. I love the novelty of it, but Anthony’s addicted to it.

ANTHONY HA: Cheers, mate.

J LEE: Cheers. Okay, I get it. It’s kind of like Worcestershire and ketchup mixed.

BURNS: And a lot of spices.

HA: Are we rolling?

J LEE: We are. I’m surprised you guys wanted to meet so early. What time did you finish at the restaurant yesterday?

BURNS: Anthony went to Keens.

HA: For a friend’s birthday—10 o’clock reservation. They pushed the food out in an hour and then we were done. I was like, “What?”

J LEE: What’d you guys drink?

HA: I brought a magnum of Bruno Duchêne and a Strohmeier white.

J LEE: Nice. You get the mutton?

HA: We got the mutton, medium.

J LEE: Yeah, you’ve got to go medium. Rare mutton is kind of disgusting. 

HA: Medium rare is gross.

J LEE: Yeah, I’m mostly a medium guy. 

HA: Here’s the thing: Medium in New York is pink throughout. Medium rare in New York is like—

J LEE: Cold in the middle. I don’t want that. So what time did you get home? 

HA: I went to Pumps [a strip club in Brooklyn] after.

J LEE: Wow. So you needed this breakfast. I wish I was hungover. This is the only time I’ve eaten McDonald’s breakfast not hungover or at the airport.

BURNS: Something weird is happening to me right now where I think it’s delicious.

J LEE: [Laughs] It’s really good. But I’m surprised you guys are awake this early.

BURNS: I’ve been up for hours. I like to be up by 7:30 or 8 o’clock every day, even if I’m not working.

J LEE: What time do you guys close the restaurant?

HA: Midnight.

J LEE: So by the time you get home and eat and chill, it’s already 1:30, 2. 

BURNS: And then I’ve got to scroll on TikTok for a little bit. Decompress. 

J LEE: That’s insane.

BURNS: Yeah, but I’ve always been like that. I’m not a chill person.

J LEE: [Laughs] That’s the quote. 

BURNS: It’s unfortunately true. Sleeping is a means to get to the next day for me.

HA: This biscuit is good.

BURNS: What is this? Chicken on a pancake?

J LEE: It’s a McGriddle.

BURNS: McDonald’s breakfast is new to me. I didn’t grow up with it.

J LEE: Wait, where are you from? 

BURNS: I’m from Nyack, the suburbs of New York.

J LEE: Anthony, where are you from? 

HA: I grew up in Jersey.

J LEE: Okay. So you guys are New York people. I don’t know why I’m always thinking that you’re Southern. I guess because of your name, “Sadie Mae.”

BURNS: I love that.

J LEE: I’m like, “Of course you like biscuits and sausage.”

BURNS: It’s the personality. I’m too grating.

J LEE: I see it now. You’re very type A. 

BURNS: Yeah. Intense is the word people often use. But we were not a fast-food household, except for my grandpa who would bring popcorn chicken from KFC every time he came to visit.

J LEE: I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be eating fast food for the first time. You guys are so busy with the restaurant. Do you have time to do anything? Do you watch television?

HA: No.

J LEE: You don’t watch any shows? 

BURNS: Not in this current iteration of our lives, but I love TikTok.

J LEE: Are you on food TikTok? 

BURNS: I’m on basic girl TikTok. I watch—

J LEE: Makeup tutorials?

BURNS: Alix Earle.

J LEE: I’m being sexist.

BURNS: No, it’s my truth. I watch her do her makeup and go to the club. I’m like, “What is my feed?”

J LEE: I downloaded TikTok, but I won’t let myself make an account because it’s just going to be a deep dark hole.

BURNS: It is, but I’m on my feet, I’m not looking at my phone all the time in that way. So for me, it’s a post-work routine where I completely dissociate and turn my brain off. You see an old person doing a weird dance and 500,000 people have liked it and you’re like, “Okay, this is actually beautiful.”

J LEE: So how long has the restaurant been open now?

HA: Six months.

BURNS: We’re not even a new restaurant anymore.

HA: We’re just a restaurant.

J LEE: How was service last night? 

BURNS: It was great. We’re really getting into a groove. We’ve hired people.

HA: I’ve hired myself out of a job.

J LEE: Now you just go to Pumps all the time. [Laughs]

BURNS: Well, Anthony’s going to be focusing on building the other space. 

J LEE: Are we talking about that? 

HA: Cat’s out of the bag. We signed, baby.

J LEE: Congrats.

HA: I set a timeline of four months to build it. We’re shooting for September. It’s going to be a bistro.

J LEE: Ha’s Bistro.

BURNS: Bistrot Ha.

HA: Bistrot Ha with a T.

BURNS: We didn’t want to be like Ha’s Bistro because it’s already Ha’s Snack Bar, and I think Bistrot Ha has a nice ring to it. And it’s also ’90s nostalgia or something.

J LEE: Bistrot with the T feels like the French version, and bistro with an O feels more English somehow.

HA: That makes sense.

J LEE: September?

HA: That’s the goal.

J LEE: You’re writing off that Keen’s meal? You’re doing steaks?

BURNS: We don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s going to be a lot of “live cooking.”

HA: Yeah, we have a hood. We’ll get a little grill.

J LEE: Like Benihana? There needs to be a Ha’s hibachi spot.

BURNS: That would be awesome.

J LEE: What is live cooking, though? 

BURNS: Right now we have no kitchen at the snack bar. So live cooking means searing a steak or pork to order and building a plate around that à la minute.

J LEE: Okay, so it means just actually cooking.

BURNS: Yeah, right now we’re doing some sort of hybrid where it’s like—

HA: Heating and finishing.

J LEE: I guess it’s not a full kitchen. What do you have in there?

HA: Two inductions and a rationale.

J LEE: You know that I’m coming tonight?

BURNS: You are?

J LEE: 7 p.m.

BURNS: But we won’t be there.

J LEE: Neither of you?

BURNS: No because we have this Cultured magazine event. It’s the first night that neither of us will be there.

J LEE: Well, I’ll let you know how it goes.

BURNS: I’m nervous.

HA: We have a new cook in there. 

BURNS: Actually, it’s really hard for us to not be there.

J LEE: But it’s the best when you get to a point where you don’t have to be there all the time. Especially when you have the two restaurants, you literally can’t be in two places at one time.

BURNS: This is why you hire good people. We have no bad eggs that work with us right now. It’s kind of remarkable. We’re exceptionally busy. We’re a 24-seat restaurant that—

HA: Did 108 last night.

J LEE: Whoa! Four turns?

BURNS: Yes.

HA: Well, we put three tables outside. 

BURNS: But it’s kind of insane because people are always lamenting the staffing side of it. We’re lucky right now; things will ebb and flow, but everyone is kind, eager, and into the work environment. It’s awesome.

J LEE: I used to work at restaurants, and I go to so many places where I’m like, “It would suck to work here. I have PTSD.” But at Ha’s I’m like, “I bet it would be cute.”

BURNS: We’re literally having so much fun. I catch glimpses of it when we put on a certain song or whatever—we’re making people listen to some crazy music.

J LEE: The music is awesome. 

BURNS: Thank you. I think so too, but not everyone would agree because we’re playing what we want. Yesterday we played the entire Lorde Pure Heroine album. [Laughs]

J LEE: A classic.

BURNS: I could tell not everyone was into it, but the front of house, we were literally dancing through the room.

HA: Some people want service. 

BURNS: We’re giving service. We’re just dancing while we give the service. [Laughs] Also, some people come in looking for an experience, and some people come in and they’re miserable.

J LEE: People have weird ideas about restaurant service. They want a servant for the night, basically. 

BURNS: And if you come in with an agenda of nitpicking, it’s not the space for you. Our space is loud and crammed and lively. There is nothing perfect about the experience you’re getting, and you have to be down with that. And if you’re not, the bistro might be more your speed. We’ll have white tablecloths and full service.

HA: Hopefully.

J LEE: Tablecloths!

BURNS: Yeah. The snack bar is cowboy shit, and we like that.

J LEE: That’s what’s so fun about it. Also, it’s called a “snack bar.” 

BURNS: It’s a fucking snack bar. There’s a line out front and we’re blasting pop music. It is what it is. There’s a version of me that likes that, and then there’s a version of me that’s excited to do something more buttoned-up, which I think we have in us.

HA: For sure.

J LEE: I have something to tell you guys. 

HA: What?

J LEE: Esther [Gauntlett] and I went to The Grill without you.

BURNS: What the hell? 

J LEE: We had to do it. It was our ten-year anniversary.

BURNS: How was it?

J LEE: It was amazing. It’s so expensive, but it’s the best in every way. The prime rib—I didn’t think it could it’s the most perfectly cooked piece of meat I’ve had in my life.

BURNS: Here’s the thing: Major Food Group is doing it like no other.

J LEE: They kill it. I want to go to Carbone. I haven’t been in so long.

BURNS: I’ve never been to Carbone. 

J LEE: We have to go.

BURNS: We actually should. We go to the Parm at [the outlet mall] Woodbury Commons. We’ve been so often that they actually know us.

J LEE: That’s crazy.

BURNS: The most perfect day you could ever have, in my humble opinion, is being hungover in that amazing “I don’t give a fuck” way. You drive to Woodbury Commons, you spend all the money you have on stupid designer shit, and then you get a negroni at Parm and drive back home.

J LEE: Am I allowed to ask about celebrities?

BURNS: Yeah.

J LEE: Who are some of your favorite celebs that have come in recently? 

BURNS: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco.

J LEE: Interview magazine cover stars. 

BURNS: It was a pleasure to serve them. Benny’s honestly really sweet. 

J LEE: He’s a big foodie, right? 

BURNS: Yeah. And Emily Ratajkowski came in.

J LEE: Love her.

BURNS: I was so impressed by her. She ordered brain with eggs and Maggi, and wiped the plate clean. She ate everything with gusto. 

J LEE: Our queen.

BURNS: Also, I want to have it on record that we would love to invite Addison Rae to dine at Ha’s any time she wants.

J LEE: [Laughs] I want this for you. Anything fun on the menu today? What should I order?

BURNS: Pâté chaud is coming back. We have a special radish dish. It’ll be off-menu, but we’ll save one for you. We’ve been doing that with caramelized fish sauce, so kind of like a tikka base. You make a savory caramel, and add fish sauce and shallots and stuff. We call it sticky sauce because it’s this viscous—

HA: Sugary sauce.

BURNS: And then we’ve added ground pork and lime leaf and pepper and chilies to it, and you dip the radishes into that, and it’s really good.

J LEE: That sounds sick. How often are you guys changing the menu?

HA: We were doing it once a week, but now we’re going to chill out.

J LEE: Yeah, it’s tough.

HA: Just for the summer, because we have to make it a little bit streamlined for everyone.

J LEE: You get ramps?

HA: I got ramps yesterday.

J LEE: What are you doing with the ramps?

HA: I’m going to put them in the oven at 80 Celsius for 20 minutes in oil. Blend that shit up.

J LEE: Yum. Okay, I don’t know how to wrap this up. I guess one more thing. Fuck, marry, kill: chicken, beef, pork?

BURNS: We have so many different versions of this game that we’ve been playing at the restaurant. I’ve been thinking about “chicken, beef, pork.” I go back and forth on it a lot.

HA: It’s really hard.

BURNS: Ultimately I’m going to be marry chicken, fuck pork, kill beef. 

J LEE: I would marry chicken. I eat chicken the most probably out of the three.

BURNS: Me too. Also, I’m white and from the suburbs, so I like breast meat the best.

HA: Even if it’s really dry?

BURNS: Even if it’s really dry.

J LEE: What about you, Anthony?

HA: I think I’d marry pork. But then the beef comes in and you’re like, “Fuck.”

J LEE: But pork is so sinful. It feels like the right thing to—

HA: No, no. Listen, you fuck the pork. Pork is the best. Beef, I understand the qualms with it, but when you have that beef from England or Spain, it’s the best, right? So you fuck beef, marry pork, kill chicken. It’s not hard.

BURNS: This is the right answer for him.

J LEE: We all contain our own truths. [Laughs] Okay, so how can we get a reservation at Carbone? Do you guys have a hookup?

BURNS: No.

J LEE: Maybe they’ll read this. We need to go to Carbone.

BURNS: I want the Major Food Group hotline.

J LEE: We’re putting it out there into the world.