Jon Neidich opens Saint Denis, a downtown French bistro in SoHo
Chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley, formerly of Pastis, runs the kitchen at the West Houston and LaGuardia corner space.
Jon Neidich has opened Saint Denis, a French bistro and bar in the former Morgenstern's ice cream space at the corner of West Houston and LaGuardia Place, on the edge of SoHo and the West Village. It is the latest project from his company, Golden Age Hospitality.
Neidich describes the venture as a return to downtown roots with classic French cooking. The intimate room draws on the energy of the late 1980s and 1990s downtown New York, and he frames every opening as a step into the unknown that lets a space come to life.
He thinks of the address as a SoHo venue, positioned at the bottom of what was historically the Village and at the entrance to both that neighbourhood and SoHo. He calls it the intersection of a small New York moment, informed by the great downtown French restaurants of the area.
The bistro takes its name from Saint Denis, the patron saint of France, and from Dionysius, the Greek god of wine. The kitchen is run by chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley, whose career includes Pastis, The View and St. Anselm.
Beverage director Sarah Morrissey joins from Le Veau d'Or, where she held the same role, and wine director Jamie Kelso arrives from Parcelle. Together they have assembled a menu built for any occasion, and a drinks programme they say celebrates the classics of the genre.
The menu leads with straightforward bistro fare: steak au poivre, escargot and chicken liver mousse among the dishes, alongside French-leaning cocktails and a list of more than 80 wines sourced entirely from France. Neidich says the aim is a tight menu that does classic downtown French-American food well.
He credits Meek-Bradley's long history cooking that food for shaping the list, telling the trade press the brief was to build something he himself would want to eat. The result, he says, honours the things unique to classic New York French restaurants.
As an art collector and board chair of the public art organisation Creative Time, Neidich put his aesthetic instincts into the room. The dining room's focal point is a 17-foot antique Art Deco bar back he personally sourced in Paris.
Around it, the walls carry a salon-style hanging of sketches, prints and photographs, several of them commissions Neidich placed with young artists specifically for the space. Wood shutters and merlot leather booths complete a room he wants to feel like it has been there a long time.
Neidich says a French bistro in SoHo must have art and artists as part of its story and culture, and that the aim is for the room to blend into the neighbourhood's landscape. The intent, he adds, is to echo the great dining rooms of downtown New York's past.
Golden Age Hospitality is the company behind several downtown fixtures, among them Le Dive, The Nines and Acme. Saint Denis extends that run of openings while stepping toward a more traditional French register than some of his earlier rooms.
The team behind Saint Denis
The operational line is led by three people with restaurants Neidich has long admired. Meek-Bradley comes to the stoves from Pastis, the landmark Keith McNally brasserie, and before that ran kitchens at St. Anselm and The View.
Morrissey arrives from Le Veau d'Or, the Upper East Side institution where French cuisine of a far older school is the brief, to run beverages. Kelso, previously of the wine shop and bar Parcelle, oversees the all-French list.
That list is one of the bistro's defining features, with more than 80 selections and no wines from outside France. It is beside a cocktail programme Neidich describes as French in spirit, matched to food that leans on escargot, mousse and pepper-seared steak.
The room and what comes next
The 17-foot Art Deco bar back dominates the space, its Parisian provenance a deliberate anchor for a room Neidich wanted to feel established rather than new. Commissions from young artists hang salon-style across the walls, the start of what he calls an ongoing dialogue.
Neidich says the company always works toward rooms that feel part of the neighbourhood and blend into the landscape, as if they had stood there for years. Saint Denis is the newest answer to that ambition, and the bistro is now open to the public.
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Image: Courtesy of Saint Denis
