dining
SoHo Eat & Drink
By Harper
Food and Drink: Eating in SoHo
SoHo's restaurant scene has evolved from its artist-community roots into one of the most varied and quality-driven dining districts in Manhattan. The following represents the range across price points and styles.
Breakfast and Coffee
Balthazar Bakery — the retail bakery arm of the legendary Balthazar brasserie — opens early and does extraordinary croissants, pain au chocolat, and bread. The basket of viennoiserie is one of the most satisfying breakfast experiences in the neighborhood.
Dominique Ansel Bakery (189 Spring Street) — the French-born pastry chef who invented the Cronut (croissant-donut hybrid, which generated lines around the block when it launched in 2013) operates his SoHo bakery with a changing menu of inventive and beautiful pastries. Worth visiting for the craftsmanship.
Saturdays NYC — primarily a surfboard and clothing shop, but its cafe on the ground floor, opening onto a garden in back, is among the most pleasant coffee experiences in SoHo.
La Colombe — the Philadelphia-based specialty roaster has a well-designed SoHo cafe at 270 Lafayette Street, with some of the best espresso in the neighborhood.
Casual and Lunch
Parm (248 Mulberry, just outside SoHo but essential) — for hero sandwiches and Italian-American food done with genuine care. The chicken parm hero is a legitimate New York institution.
Café Habana (17 Prince Street) — a Cuban-Mexican restaurant with an enormous following for its grilled corn with cotija cheese, lime, and chili — a dish that may have done more to popularize Mexican street corn in New York than any other single menu item. Cash only and perpetually busy; the takeout window next door is a good solution.
Jack's Wife Freda (224 Lafayette Street) — an extremely popular all-day cafe serving a broadly Mediterranean, loosely South African–influenced menu. The green shakshuka has been a neighborhood staple for years. Perpetual wait for tables on weekends.
Balthazar (80 Spring Street) is not casual — it is one of the most famous restaurants in New York, a grand French brasserie with a bar of genuine beauty and a menu of precise classic cooking. But it serves lunch (and weekend brunch), and a seat at the zinc bar for a croque monsieur and a glass of wine is one of the canonical SoHo experiences, fully accessible to visitors on a moderate budget.
Dinner
Lure Fishbar (142 Mercer Street) — a subterranean seafood restaurant whose design (yacht cabin meets 1960s supper club) is as memorable as its raw bar, which is one of the finest in the city.
Charlie Bird (5 King Street) — a wine bar and restaurant on the southern edge of SoHo with a carefully curated Italian-leaning menu and an exceptional natural wine list. The room is beautiful; the crowd reliably interesting.
Raoul's (180 Prince Street) — a French bistro that has been operating in SoHo since 1975, surviving every wave of change by maintaining its essential character: dark, convivial, devoted to classic bistro cooking at high quality. The steak frites and the duck confit are exactly what they should be. The bar in the back garden is open weather permitting and is one of the most atmospheric drinking spots in downtown Manhattan.
Dominique Ansel Kitchen (137 Seventh Avenue, just west of SoHo) — a more intimate, prix-fixe counterpart to Ansel's bakery, for those who want the full creative-pastry experience as a dinner.
Bars and Nightlife
Fanelli Cafe (94 Prince Street) — as noted above, a genuine survivor from the artist era. The pressed-tin ceiling, antique bar, and general atmosphere of a corner saloon from 1890 are all authentic. Cash only. One of the few bars in SoHo where locals still feel comfortable.
Broome Street Bar (363 West Broadway) — a neighborhood bar of genuine unpretentiousness in a neighborhood that is very pretentious. A good selection of beers, a pool table in the back, and a crowd that actually lives nearby.
Mr. Purple (not in SoHo but visible from it) — a rooftop bar in the Lower East Side with views across the SoHo skyline, worth mentioning as a place to look at the neighborhood from above.