Café Carmellini – Andrew Carmellini's love letter to old New York

Café Carmellini fills the soaring ground floor of The Fifth Avenue Hotel, the painstakingly restored 1907 mansion at 250 Fifth Avenue, with the kind of old New York theatre that chef Andrew Carmellini spent fifteen years circling before finally coming home to it. After a decade and a half building the city's favourite casual rooms, he describes this return to white-tablecloth cooking as the most personal project of his career, a menu that fuses Italian and French technique with a distinctly New York sensibility. The restaurant carries his own family's name, a nod to a coffee-importing business that his grandfather ran in Tuscany for 120 years before emigrating. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and in its first two years it has already climbed to number 39 on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list. The room itself, designed by Martin Brudnizki, is reason enough to book: a double-height neoclassical hall filled with sculptural trees, Juliet balconies and stained glass.

01The room and the setting

Long before it was a restaurant, the address belonged to Charlotte Goodridge, a Gilded Age hostess whose Fifth Avenue receptions were the talk of Manhattan society. In 1907 the property was rebuilt as a five-storey Renaissance palazzo by McKim, Mead & White, the firm behind the Washington Square Arch and the Brooklyn Museum, and it later passed through life as a bank and then a crumbling office building before a seven-year restoration returned it to grandeur, reopening in March 2023 as The Fifth Avenue Hotel.

Martin Brudnizki inherited ceilings nearly thirty feet high in the original mansion hall and Juliet balconies that the ownership rebuilt, at considerable expense, into a tiered dining gallery overlooking the main room. His design answers that scale with a deliberately maximalist hand: two sculptural trees rise through the double-height space, joined by blue ceramic tile, oversized crystal chandeliers, marble counters and stained-glass windows patterned with peacocks. Chef Carmellini works an open kitchen at one end, visible from most of the room, so that on any given night diners can watch him at the pass.

02The chef

Andrew Carmellini's career reads as a tour of New York's most coveted kitchens over thirty years, from early posts under Daniel Boulud at Café Boulud and at Lespinasse, through to the string of neighbourhood favourites he later built himself, including Locanda Verde, The Dutch, Lafayette, Bar Primi and the hotel restaurants Leuca and Westlight. A James Beard Award winner, he spent much of the past fifteen years focused on that more casual end of dining before deciding the city still had room for a grander, old-school room of his own.

Insider tip

Book via Resy 14 days ahead at 9am; breakfast, lunch and dinner served daily.

Café Carmellini's name is a direct tribute to his grandfather's coffee-importing business, which traded out of Tuscany for 120 years before the family came to America, and the restaurant leans on that history throughout, from the Italian and French dishes on the menu to the New York sensibility he brings to both.

03The cooking

The dinner menu is built in the old brasserie pattern, moving from Raw & Cured through First and Second courses to Entrées, with prices and format that reward sharing rather than strict three-course discipline. Dishes range from Oysters à la Pomme and Bluefin Tuna Crudo in Acqua Pazza through heartier plates such as Roasted Veal Medallions alla Ossobuco, Squab en Croûte and Lamb alla Messinese with eggplant and sesame, alongside a changing Risotto del Giorno.

A pasta course sits at the centre of the kitchen's identity, with the Duck-Duck-Duck Tortellini and a Lobster Cannelloni della Casa standing as signature dishes, while lighter lunch and weekend brunch menus bring in dishes such as a Comté soufflé, Linguine alle Vongole and a Champagne Brunch two-course menu served Saturdays and Sundays from 11.30am to 2.30pm, with an optional Osetra caviar and potato blini supplement.

04What to order

Start with the Sweet Crab & Pepper Mille-Feuille or the Wagyu Beef Tartare before moving into the Lobster Cannelloni della Casa or Duck-Duck-Duck Tortellini. For a main, the Sea Scallops 'Normandie' and the Atlantic Halibut au Caviar show the kitchen's French side, while the Chicken 'Gran Sasso' for Two leans Italian. To finish, the Blueberry Pavlova with Sweet Corn and the Fig & Pine Nut Tart with Honey Gelato are listed alongside a Negroni Sorbetto and a Sticky Toffee Pudding with aged rum.

05Wine and drinks

The wine programme is overseen by Master Sommelier Josh Nadel and runs to roughly 1,800 bottles drawn from Italy, France, the United States and beyond, built to match a menu that moves constantly between the two cuisines. The bar list leans into its own sense of travel and nostalgia, with house cocktails such as the Fifty-Fifty Martini made with gin, Lillet and rose petal jam, a Fichi Americano of vermouth, Campari and fig leaf soda, and a Calvados Manhattan finished with pommeau.

06When to go and booking

Café Carmellini serves breakfast and lunch daily alongside dinner, with weekday breakfast from 7am to 10.45am and lunch from 11.45am to 2pm, extending to 11am and 2.30pm respectively on Saturdays and Sundays; dinner runs nightly from 5pm to 10pm. Tables are released on Resy fourteen days in advance at 9am and, especially at prime evening times, can be booked out within minutes, so reserving as soon as the window opens is the safest route to a table in the main room or one of the balcony seats above it.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.