Casa Mono – Costa Brava smoke on Gramercy's Irving Place

Casa Mono occupies the slim corner of Irving Place and East 17th Street in Gramercy, where floor-to-ceiling windows swing open onto the pavement on mild evenings. It opened in 2003 as chef Andy Nusser's Spanish venture with partners Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich; Batali sold his stake in 2019, leaving Bastianich and Nusser running the same corner more than two decades on. Nusser, who spent part of his childhood in the Costa Brava fishing town of Cadaqués, built the menu around a plancha grill set directly behind the bar, where cooks sear clams, sardines and octopus within arm's reach of anyone perched on a stool. Thirteen tables fill the rest of the narrow dining room. The restaurant holds one MICHELIN Star, a distinction it has kept every year since 2009, and in 2015 the New York Times critic Pete Wells awarded it three stars.

01The room and the setting

Step past the glossy black doors and the first thing underfoot is a mosaic tile floor, laid when the restaurant opened in 2003. The walls on both sides are stacked floor to ceiling with bottles of sherry and Spanish wine, as much part of the decor as the list itself. The dining room comfortably holds thirteen tables, but the better seats are the fifteen stools at the bar, set right in front of the grill, where the smoke and clatter of plates cooked a la plancha are part of the show. When the weather allows, the big windows open fully onto Irving Place, blurring the line between dining room and street.

02The chef

Executive chef Andy Nusser grew up in Cadaqués, the old fishing town on Spain's Costa Brava, and that coastline still shapes the kitchen he opened in 2003 with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. He favours adventurous cuts — sweetbreads, cockscombs, pig's feet — alongside more familiar razor clams and bone marrow, reworking Catalan tapas rather than copying them. Batali divested his stake in the wider restaurant group in 2019 after misconduct allegations; Casa Mono today is run by Bastianich and Nusser, with Danielle Pappas as general manager and Jonathan Melendez as chef de cuisine.

Insider tip

Order several small plates at once, tapas-bar style; the bar seats in front of the grill are the best in the house.

03The cooking

The kitchen works largely off the plancha, the flat iron griddle that gives the grilled dishes their char and smoke. Small plates arrive in quick succession rather than in courses — the staff prefer you order most of the menu at once, tapas-bar style — moving from cured ham and croquetas through seafood a la plancha to heavier plates of oxtail, lamb belly and duck. It is cooking built for sharing across a crowded table, loud, fast and unapologetically rich.

04What to order

Start with pan con tomate or the hand-carved Jamón Ibérico de Pata Negra Cinco Jotas, sliced to order. The fluke crudo comes with coconut leche de tigre and carrot conserva, while the creamy eggs are topped with sea urchin, ancient anchovy oil and walnuts — one of the dishes regulars ask for by name. The fideos, a nest of noodles with chorizo, cockles and garlic-sherry alioli, and the bone marrow with trout roe, horseradish and everything-bagel spice both show the kitchen's habit of pairing classic Spanish technique with an unexpected final note. Sweetbreads with fennel al mono and Marcona almond vinaigrette are worth saving room for.

05Wine and drinks

Casa Mono shares its wine list with Bar Jamón next door: close to 600 bottles, weighted heavily toward Spain's expanding regions, a list that has drawn recognition from Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator and the Spanish magazine Sibaritas. Sherry gets particular attention, with bottles stacked along the dining room walls rather than hidden in a cellar — a reminder that this is a list built for drinking with food, not for display.

06The neighbourhood

Irving Place sits just east of Union Square, in the quiet residential pocket around Gramercy Park. Casa Mono and Bar Jamón stand side by side on the corner at East 17th Street, two halves of the same idea — one a sit-down tapas bar, the other a standing-room ham counter with its menu scrawled on the mirror behind the bar. The nearest subway is 14th Street–Union Square, served by multiple lines, putting the restaurant within easy walking distance of the Union Square Greenmarket and the brownstone streets of Gramercy.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.