Manhatta – contemporary American cooking sixty floors above Wall Street

Manhatta occupies the 60th floor of 28 Liberty Street, a tower that was a high point of urban transformation during the 1960s, the first International Style building in Lower Manhattan, raised as Chase Manhattan Bank's headquarters with David Rockefeller playing a leading role in the project. Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group turned the floor into a restaurant and bar, taking its first dinner reservations from 17 July 2018. It is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, in the "Spare no expense" price bracket, for contemporary American cooking with a global reach. The room does not try to compete with what lies beyond its glass: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Hudson, the spires of Midtown. A kitchen now led by Executive Chef Michele Brogioni works a prix-fixe dinner of three, four or five courses, and a shorter lunch menu, built on ingredients that read as both familiar and inventive.

01The room and the setting

The tower was built 1957-64 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Gordon Bunshaft as partner in charge of design, after Chase merged with the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1955 and planned to consolidate 8,700 employees under one roof, with David Rockefeller playing a leading role in the project. Landmarked in 2009 and renamed 28 Liberty, the building later saw SOM return to lead a comprehensive adaptive reuse, restoring historic elements such as the parapet surrounding the plaza and the public art within it.

Woods Bagot designed the restaurant and its sister event space to celebrate the neighbourhood's history, nodding to the 1961 building's mid-century modern sensibilities. A 40-foot black walnut bar, reportedly one of the longest in the city, anchors the room, set against warm wood panelling, polished bronze accents and navy blue banquettes. Architect Wade Little wanted to create a home in the sky that feels warm and relaxed enough for casual meals and drinks, while still giving full weight to the views. Together the restaurant and bar occupy a whopping 38,000 square feet with unobstructed outlooks on all four sides.

Manhatta sits on the north side of 28 Liberty, so the dining room looks toward Midtown and at least four bridges, while the mostly French wine list is complemented by sophisticated cocktails named after New York neighbourhoods, and binoculars thoughtfully left on the windowsill for diners who want to pick out landmarks across the rivers.

02The chef

Manhatta opened under chef Jason Pfeifer, who had worked at Noma and Per Se, serving a solid lineup of seasonal, French-inspired fare as a three-course tasting menu in the dining room. The kitchen has since passed to Executive Chef Michele Brogioni, with Simon Ek as chef de cuisine and Heather McCaffery running pastry — the names now signing off both the dinner tasting menu and the prix-fixe lunch.

Insider tip

Reservations recommended for dinner; the bar welcomes walk-ins at its 40-foot black walnut counter daily from 11:30am.

03The cooking

Dinner runs as a seasonal tasting menu of three, four or five courses, priced at 128, 148 and 168 dollars, each with an optional wine pairing. It opens on raw and composed plates — bluefin tuna, hamachi crudo, foie gras mousse with maple and sobacha — before a middle course of glazed sweetbreads, seared scallop or ricotta casoncelli with black truffle, and closes on mains that run from a ribeye of beef with za'atar to a charcoal-grilled sea bass with coconut curry, or a butter-poached lobster as a supplement. Lunch is shorter, two or three courses, drawn from the same pantry. The list the restaurant calls award-winning is mostly French, with an impressive selection of white Burgundies running through it.

04What to order

From the dinner menu: the Buffalo stracciatella with radicchio, hazelnut and pickled mushroom; glazed sweetbreads with fig and pickled chanterelle; dry-aged duck breast with smoked peanut, plum and chrysanthemum; and the lamb loin and belly with preserved eggplant and bell pepper. To finish, the lemon verbena semifreddo with fromage blanc and melon sherbet, or the fig vacherin with bergamot and Marcona almond. At the bar, the dry-aged burger with koji onions and Cooper sharp, or the open-faced lobster roll on brioche with pickled celery and tarragon, pair easily with the house Manhatta(n), built on Wild Turkey 101 rye and bourbon with Cocchi Torino.

05Wine and drinks

The bar pours neighbourhood cocktails — Sunset Park, Midtown East, Brooklyn, SoHo — alongside signature drinks such as the clarified-milk-punch Escape, and a run of beers on draft from Queens and Brooklyn breweries. Walk-ins are welcome at the 40-foot black walnut counter for cocktails and the à la carte bar menu; the dining room itself runs on reservations.

06The neighbourhood

Manhatta stands inside what Fosun International calls its ongoing reinvention of One Chase Manhattan Plaza into 28 Liberty, run together with Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. At street level the building is still home to Isamu Noguchi's Sunken Rock Garden, built in 1961 as a fountain, and Jean Dubuffet's Group of Four Trees, installed in 1972 — two pieces of public art that predate the restaurant by decades and now sit below diners looking down from the 60th floor.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.