Carne Mare – Carmellini's Italian chophouse adrift on Pier 17

Carne Mare occupies the south-west corner of Pier 17 in the revived South Street Seaport, a two-storey chophouse whose upstairs dining room looks straight across the East River toward the Brooklyn Bridge. It is the work of Andrew Carmellini, the James Beard Award-winning chef who opened Locanda Verde with Robert De Niro in 2009 before founding NoHo Hospitality Group, and who brought Carne Mare to the Seaport on 8 June 2021 after a project more than three years in the making. The name sets out the proposition precisely, meat and sea, a menu that runs from Venetian-style crudi and oysters to dry-aged porterhouse, cooked in a glass-walled, wood-fired kitchen in plain view of the room. Carne Mare is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a mark it has carried since its first year of trading. It reads as an unapologetically expensive room, the kind of place where a shared tomahawk and a bottle of Barolo are the point rather than the exception.

01The room and the setting

The building is pure waterfront theatre, a two-storey space designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio that pairs polished wood and brass tables with leather banquettes, Art Deco-style mirrors and nautical wall sconces. The ground floor holds a wrap-around bar and a wood-fired oven, with ample seating spilling out onto the pier itself; a grand staircase spirals up to a second dining room lined with banquettes, set beside an open chef's kitchen that lets guests watch the grill at work.

Every table trades on the location: Pier 17 juts out over the East River, so the upstairs room and its outdoor seating frame the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan waterfront rather than another dining room wall. It is a setting built for a long dinner that starts with a martini at the bar and ends with the bridge lit up outside.

02The chef

Andrew Carmellini trained in some of the toughest kitchens on either side of the Atlantic, working under Valentino Marcatili at the two-Michelin-star San Domenico in Emilia-Romagna before returning to New York for stints at Lespinasse and as sous chef at Le Cirque. He became Daniel Boulud's opening chef de cuisine at Café Boulud in 1998, a post that brought him the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef: New York City award in 2005.

Insider tip

Selected in the MICHELIN Guide; open for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.

In 2009 Robert De Niro, Josh Pickard and Luke Ostrom brought Carmellini in to open Locanda Verde inside the Greenwich Hotel; the following year the three formally founded NoHo Hospitality Group, which now runs more than a dozen restaurants and bars, Carne Mare among them. In the kitchen day to day is Chef de Cucina Dwight Sanon, a Queens native and Culinary Institute of America graduate who started with an internship at the Michelin-starred Spotted Pig before working his way through Upland, Nic's, Electric Lemon, Nat's on Bleecker and the Dutch.

03The cooking

The menu is built in the traditional chophouse order, but filled in with an Italian hand: it opens with fine seafood, cocktails and oysters, moves through traditional antipasti, salads and carpaccio, then into housemade pastas and the main event of prime-aged beef, wagyu and prime rib, each cut arriving with a choice of steakhouse contorni. Dry-aging and wood fire run through the whole card, from the beef to the salt-baked fish.

04What to order

Start with the Wagyu Beef Tartare, dressed in tonnato sauce with gnocco fritto on the side, or the Sicilian Caesar with toasted sesame and egg mimosa. The pasta course is where the Italian chophouse idea earns its name: Spicy Lobster Spaghetti in a sugo all'arrabbiata, or The Don 'Lasagn', built with dry-aged beef bolognese and parmesan fonduta.

For the main event, the 30-Day Dry-Aged Tomahawk 'Il Buttero' and the 40-Day Dry-Aged Porterhouse 'Bistecca Fiorentina' are built to share, while the 12oz Gorgonzola-Cured Wagyu Striploin is the house signature, the cheese cure pulled off before the steak hits the grill. From the sea, the Salt-Baked Black Sea Bass comes cooked in lemon leaves, and a Hot Buttered Lobster Tail can be added to any order. On the side, the Twice-Baked Potato finished with black truffle and fontina is worth the extra plate.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list runs to roughly 800 labels drawn mainly from Italy, California and France, a serious enough backbone to stand behind a menu built on dry-aged beef and butter sauces. At the bar, house cocktails lean into the chophouse-meets-trattoria mood: the Granita mixes Campari, grapefruit, limoncello and prosecco, while the Torino pairs Ilegal Mezcal with Nonino 'Quintessentia', Cocchi di Torino and Galliano Ristretto. A short spirit-free list, including a 'Champagne' cocktail made with French Bloom Le Rosé and raspberry, covers the non-drinking table.

06When to go and booking

In October 2026 Carne Mare serves dinner Sunday from 5pm to 9pm and Monday through Saturday from 5pm to 10pm, with lunch Monday to Friday from noon to 3pm and brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 11:30am to 3pm. A happy hour runs Monday to Friday from 4pm to 6pm. The kitchen also builds seasonal set menus, such as a Thanksgiving dinner priced at $145 per person with a choice of turkey breast, sea bass or a wagyu striploin supplement. Reservations are taken directly through the restaurant's own site.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.