Ci Siamo – Danny Meyer's live-fire Italian arrival at Manhattan West

Ci Siamo sits one floor above the paved plaza of Manhattan West, the glassy development that stitched Hudson Yards to Penn Station, and it announces itself quietly: a modest storefront with a staircase behind it. Climb that stair and the room opens into a bi-level, roughly 120-seat dining room wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows, with the Empire State Building visible beyond an outdoor terrace. This is Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group returning to New York after the pandemic with its first new opening since 2018, built around chef Hillary Sterling and a kitchen that runs almost entirely on live fire. The name translates as "we've arrived" or "here we are," a phrase chosen deliberately for a restaurant that opened as the city was finding its footing again. It holds a place in the MICHELIN Guide selection, recognised for cooking that trades spectacle for the kind of plain-spoken Italian food Sterling says she would serve guests in her own home.

01The room and the setting

Guests enter through a street-level foyer before climbing a dramatic staircase into the lounge and bar, a sequence designed by the New York firm Goodrich to turn arrival itself into part of the evening. The dining room beyond overlooks Manhattan West's main plaza through walls of glass, and a private dining space adds its own bar and access to an adjoining terrace with Empire State Building views, useful for the groups and special-occasion bookings the restaurant was built to handle.

Sterling has described the plaza outside, with its landscaped lemon-scented installation, as her own private piazza, and the restaurant's open kitchen and wood-fired grill are visible from much of the room, so the scent of smoke travels well before the food does.

02The chef

Hillary Sterling trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago and built her reputation running the kitchen at Vic's in Nolita, with earlier stints at the Beatrice Inn and A Voce, where she worked alongside Lilia's Missy Robbins. Before Ci Siamo, she was the only executive chef USHG had recruited from entirely outside the company, brought in after the restaurant's original concept shifted from formal fine dining toward something looser and more welcoming.

Insider tip

Book ahead; the room overlooks the plaza and sits beside the Pendry Manhattan West hotel.

She spent the summer before opening testing recipes in the basement of Marta, USHG's wood-fired Roman restaurant, refining the focaccia, pastas and a citrus-bright, olive oil-poached seafood salad that would anchor the new menu. Pastry is handled separately by Claudia Fleming, previously of Gramercy Tavern, whose gelati and tortas close out the meal.

03The cooking

The kitchen's engine is a wood-burning oven and grill, and Sterling's menu is built around it: a cast iron focaccia with tomato conserva and a pizza bianca with anchovy, salsa verde and aioli open the meal, alongside aperitivo bites such as gnocco fritto with goat's gouda and mortadella with pistachio. Five housemade pastas sit at the centre of the dinner menu, including rigatoni alla gricia with guanciale and black pepper, cavatelli allo scoglio with crab, chili and vermouth, and stracci with rabbit, wine and parmigiano.

Mains come largely from the fire: a wood-fired whole trout with pine nuts and mustard greens, olive oil-poached orata with leeks and olives, a braised lamb with delicata squash and celery pesto, and a dry-aged bistecca alla Fiorentina priced to the market, cut generously enough to be the dish most first-time diners remember.

04What to order

Begin with the caramelized onion torta, balsamic and pecorino toscana, which has become something of a signature, alongside tuna tonnato with celery, chilies and orange. From the pasta list, the rigatoni alla gricia and the cavatelli allo scoglio are the two most asked for; from the fire, the whole wood-fired trout or the roasted half chicken with broccoli and schmaltz. Finish with Claudia Fleming's gelati, among them espresso stracciatella, hazelnut and goat's milk lemon, or the torta calabrese of espresso, almonds and dark chocolate.

05Wine and drinks

The wine programme, built by beverage director Robin Wright with USHG's Jenni Guizio, launched with more than 400 Italian-leaning selections and has kept growing since. The cocktail list leans on aperitivo tradition, with a negroni made from Occitan gin, Campari, vermouth and Barolo Chinato, a signature Ci Siamo martini, and originals such as the Bitter Giuseppe, built on cynar, punt e mes, lemon and sea salt. Aperitivo snacks, including a panino of lingua, tonnato and onion, are served in the bar and lounge on weekday afternoons.

06The neighbourhood

Ci Siamo sits inside Manhattan West, the eight-acre Brookfield Properties development that knitted together office towers, the Pendry Manhattan West hotel and a run of restaurant concepts around a central plaza, just blocks from Hudson Yards and Penn Station. It is a short walk from Madison Square Garden and the High Line's western reaches, in a stretch of the far West Side that only became a dining destination within the last few years.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.