The Commerce Inn – a 1911 carriage house turned Shaker tavern

On the quiet bend where Commerce Street curves into Barrow, in the heart of the West Village, The Commerce Inn serves pickled oysters, rarebit and pot pies inside a brick carriage house that has fed New Yorkers under one name or another for close to a century. It is the fifth restaurant from Rita Sodi and Jody Williams, the married chef-owners behind Via Carota, I Sodi, Buvette and Bar Pisellino, and comes as their third collaborative project together after Via Carota and Bar Pisellino. The space itself dates to 1911 and operated as a speakeasy out of its carriage house during Prohibition before cycling through Blue Mill Tavern, Grange Hall, Commerce and Fifty, which closed in 2018. Williams and Sodi founded The Commerce Inn in late 2021, trading the trattoria warmth of their Italian dining rooms for Shaker-inspired, early American cooking. The Commerce Inn is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for a kitchen built on heirloom recipes rather than spectacle.

01The room and the setting

The design draws directly on the Shakers, the American religious sect known for spare, functional furniture; Sodi and Williams found their reference point at the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, New York, not far from the original Mount Lebanon community, and spent roughly three years refining the room before opening. Inside, linen-clad tables and wide wooden floorboards set a plain, Shaker-toned stage that favours the plates over the room itself. The couple, who live locally among their own restaurants and treat each dining room as something closer to an extra parlour than a business, carved this one from a 1911 carriage house that has watched the corner of Commerce and Barrow change for well over a century.

02The chefs

Rita Sodi and Jody Williams are self-taught, James Beard Award-winning chefs who built their reputation one address at a time. Sodi opened I Sodi, her Tuscan restaurant inspired by the family farm north of Florence where she grew up, in 2008; Williams followed with Buvette on Grove Street in 2011. In 2014 the couple opened Via Carota together, an osteria The New Yorker called "New York's most perfect restaurant," which won them the James Beard Award for Best Chefs, NYC. The Commerce Inn arrived after Bar Pisellino, their first venture built around American rather than Italian cooking, under the restaurant group they call Officina 1397.

Insider tip

Walk-ins welcome daily 9am–11pm; limited reservations; Sunday roasts; near Via Carota and I Sodi.

03The cooking

The kitchen works from heritage recipes: pickled oysters in a bread-and-butter brine, a rarebit of melted cheese on toast, fortifying pot pies and plates of unfussy vegetables, all described on the menu as "prepared simply and served casually." Early reviews were divided — The New York Times's Pete Wells and Grub Street's Adam Platt both singled out the printed rarebit and cod cakes as the weaker plates on a menu that improved once the kitchen moved into meat and seasonal specials, with Wells's praise concentrated on generous portion sizes. Diners have more consistently rated the roast chicken, prized for its marinade and crisp skin, as the dish worth returning for.

04What to order

Start with pickled oysters in their bread-and-butter brine or potted shrimp from the tavern side of the menu. The rabbit pot pie and the rarebit are the dishes most often singled out by name, though it is the roast chicken that reviewers tend to order again.

05Wine and drinks

The tavern pours deftly crafted cocktails, clarified milk punches and smoke-edged spirits, while the wine list bypasses Europe altogether in favour of small American producers ranging from New York's Finger Lakes to California's Sierra Foothills.

06When to go and booking

The tavern runs daily from 9am to 11pm; the dining room serves breakfast and lunch until 3pm, dinner from 4pm, and Sunday roasts. Walk-ins are always welcome, though the restaurant holds only limited reservations.

07The neighbourhood

The Commerce Inn sits only a few streets from Sodi and Williams's other restaurants — Via Carota, I Sodi, Buvette and Bar Pisellino are all within an easy walk, clustered on the same stretch of the West Village — on a corner that also sits near the Cherry Lane Theatre.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.