La Mercerie
Restaurant · SoHo ·
Upscale French cafe, pastry counter, and retail showroom
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71431702/09.22_NewTrend.0.png "La Mercerie by eater.com")
Upscale French cafe, pastry counter, and retail showroom
"French bakery planned for Sotheby’s headquarters in the Breuer building on the Upper East Side, paired with Marcel as one of two projects La Mercerie intends to open there." - Andrea Strong
"An all-day French restaurant inside Roman and Williams Guild, this 2017 collaboration with chef Marie-Aude Rose pairs a high-end design showroom with an ambitious kitchen. Early coverage framed it as a “fully staged fantasy of a Parisian cafe where everything on the table — from the $6 croissants to the $100-plus ceramics — was for sale.” Under Rose, it drew raves — former Eater critic Ryan Sutton called it “one of the most compelling Gallic spots of the past decade” — and it was a 2019 James Beard Awards finalist for outstanding design. The appeal hinged on the very expensive food as much as the room: a buckwheat crepe wrapped around creamy chicken and tarragon, a rare filet with cognac sauce, and an elaborate butter program — from seaweed butter served with icy Kushi oysters to lemon and buckwheat butters — that positioned it as more technical and ambitious than a typical all-day cafe. It also served as a precursor to New York’s restaurants-in-a-shop proliferation." - Melissa McCart
"Opened in 2017 by Roman and Williams with chef and partner Marie-Aude Rose (now also with executive chef Heloise Fischbach), this stylish Soho French restaurant drew raves: the New York Times praised the “classical precision” of its French food, the New Yorker called it the “epitome of luxury” where every ingredient was “exquisite,” and former Eater NY critic Ryan Sutton highlighted its crepes as “something that could hold its own at a Michelin-starred establishment.” It was also named one of the most beautiful restaurants of 2017 by Eater NY and was a finalist in the 2019 James Beard Awards in one of the restaurant design categories." - Nadia Chaudhury
"I float into La Mercerie, a café nestled within Roman and Williams Guild, ordering a tartine or a golden-crusted croissant (and sometimes the Charlotte Aux Fraises) while basking in sunbeams across velvet chairs and vases of anemones; it feels less like brunch and more like a scene from a French film where no one ever checks their phone." - Paris Wilson
"If we had to strike all other chocolate chip cookies from the record and keep just one, it would be La Mercerie's. This cookie is thick but not too thick, gooey but still properly baked, with big discs of semi-sweet chocolate throughout. The middle is soft, the edges are crisp, and there’s a generous dusting of flaky salt on top. The Maillard reaction is really doing its work to make this cookie taste a little caramelized without relying too much on an abundance of sugar. It’s perfect." - carina finn koeppicus, neha talreja