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Get a Facial With Caviar and Yuzu at This New Upper West Side Spa

By Nicole Levy | April 26, 2017 4:15pm
 Angela Jia Kim has opened her third spa and beauty product store at 448 Columbus Avenue.
Savor Beauty + Spa
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UPPER WEST SIDE — While truffle and caviar are usually reserved for the menu at tony restaurants, a new Columbus Avenue spa would prefer you rub them on your face.

The offerings at Savor Beauty + Spa, which opened its third location at 448 Columbus Ave. Saturday, include skincare products featuring everything from Japanese yuzu to Somalian myrhh, to name a couple of its exotic ingredients.

"I live on the Upper West Side, and I know that an organic spa is so needed because all of the great eco-, new-store concepts are Downtown," said owner Angela Jia Kim, who has two other locations in the West Village and upstate.

"You know New Yorkers: They don’t like to travel. People Downtown don’t like to go above Columbus Circle, and people Uptown don’t like to go below Columbus Circle."

In addition to offering typical spa services, Savor Beauty sells natural skincare products made in and shipped from the Hudson Valley on a weekly basis. It also offers customized guidance in how to use them: "Natural skincare meets Korean beauty rituals in a New York minute," reads the company tagline. 

What exactly does Kim — whose Korean mother used to chide her for having dry skin — mean by "Korean beauty rituals"?

”Dual cleansing is very much part of the Korean beauty ritual... Western women clean their faces. Korean women really thoroughly cleanse their skin — and there's a huge difference."

Cleansing is only the first step in Kim's five-step routine, which involves toners, serums, a truffle face cream and an eye cream made with caviar extract. (Those products are made from ingredients like Japanese yuzu, Australian sandalwood, Egyptian violet leaf and Spanish cypress.)

"This five-step system that we’ve created, we’ve simplified Korean rituals… into a one-minute ritual that Western women can plug and play into their busy lives," said Kim, who declined to share her age because "a lady never tells." 

Facials and massages at the Upper West Side spa use her proprietary products, while makeovers and makeup tutorials use eco-friendly brands like Antonym and Alima Pure.

Services range in price from $35 for an express facial to $325 for a "skin clinic." Skincare products cost between $22 and $74.

In design and layout, the space at 448 Columbus channels Kim's background as a professional concert pianist — with staff lines and a "dal segno" symbol, the company's logo, painted onto the wall. The spa also hearkens back to the origins of Savor Beauty in the kitchen of her old Inwood apartment, where she once experimented with products and serums, by including a counter where guests can prepare their own custom "face cake" masks.

Kim said her company landed on the Upper West Side in spite of recommendations to expand into SoHo, TriBeCa or the Upper East Side.

"As an Upper West Side mom, wife and resident for such a long time, [I feel] it’s finally time for something like this to come uptown," she said. 

"Downtown, there’s more interested in what’s cool, what’s trendy ...But the Uptown woman is going to do her research."