The cast-iron storefront on Crosby Street is part of the argument before you step inside. The room does the rest — vintage accents warm light deviled eggs with caviar and a champagne program that treats sparkling wine as the correct choice at any hour.
Champers Social Club occupies a restored cast-iron and brick storefront on Crosby Street in SoHo. The husband-and-wife team behind it — Brenna Gilbert and Andrew McCaughan — bring backgrounds across LVMH USHG and Shake Shack. The combination explains why the room feels both designed and genuinely hospitable rather than one at the expense of the other.
The menu is French-adjacent: oysters deviled eggs with caviar roasted mushroom toast the Champers Nicoise. The beverage program specialises in champagne with a wider-than-usual selection of growers by the glass including producers who do not appear on conventional lists. The coffee is by Joe Coffee. The pace is unhurried. The room is beautiful in the way that a well-restored historic space tends to be — not because anything has been added but because not much has been taken away.
Champers runs all day from Friday through Sunday from 10am making it one of the more generous brunch windows in SoHo. The bar has limited seating worth noting if you are arriving as a group. The tables fill quickly on weekends. A reservation is the right move.
The room is inside the Roman and Williams Guild furniture store which means everything you eat from and sit on is available for purchase. It is the kind of detail that should feel gimmicky and instead feels entirely correct — as if the restaurant and the store arrived at the same sensibility independently and decided to share a building.
La Mercerie sits inside the Roman and Williams Guild at 53 Howard Street in SoHo. The ceramics glassware and linens on the table are all from the Guild collection and available to purchase. It is an arrangement that works because the objects are genuinely well chosen rather than merely decorative.
The restaurant is led by chef Marie-Aude Rose whose menu reads as a rigorous interpretation of French café cooking: croissants soft-boiled eggs with aged Comté a croc gourmand that has become one of the more discussed sandwiches in SoHo and crepes that several visitors have compared favourably to Paris. Weekend brunch runs Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 3pm. The room is calm without being quiet and full without being hectic.
La Mercerie also operates a patisserie at Marcel inside the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue. If you are making a weekend of French pastry in New York the two locations together cover the ground.
The champagne brunch runs Saturday and Sunday with a live band a roving champagne cart caviar service with housemade potato blinis and a Crêpe Suzette flambéed tableside. It is the most theatrical brunch in this edit and the most considered room. Martin Brudnizki designed the space. Andrew Carmellini cooked the food. Both took it seriously.
Café Carmellini is the signature restaurant at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 28th Street in NoMad — a Gilded Age building restored and reopened in 2022. The room was designed by Martin Brudnizki: curved sapphire-blue velvet booths caramel leather seating wood plank flooring and a second-story indoor terrace that looks down over the dining room. It earns its reputation before the food arrives.
Andrew Carmellini is a James Beard Award-winning chef whose previous restaurants include Locanda Verde The Dutch and Bar Primi. The champagne brunch is the most concentrated expression of what the restaurant does. The Crêpe Suzette is flambéed tableside. The lobster frittata is a recurring special. The caviar service arrives with housemade potato blinis. A live band plays through the service.
Reservations for the champagne brunch book out weeks in advance particularly for weekend mornings. The second-story terrace is the most coveted seating in the room. The bar seats walk-ins when available and is one of the better places to eat alone in NoMad.
The zinc bar the subway tiles the mosaic floor the distressed mirrors with handwritten daily specials — Pastis was designed to look like a Parisian bistro that has been in the same spot for decades. The brunch menu keeps that promise: eggs Benedict steak tartare a pastry basket oysters by the half dozen.
Pastis opened in 1999 on Ninth Avenue when the Meatpacking District still had meatpacking in it. Keith McNally closed it in 2014 and reopened it five years later at 52 Gansevoort Street in a larger space with the same DNA: curved zinc bar white subway tiles globe light fixtures mosaic floor and vintage mirrors with handwritten specials. The room is louder than it was and twice the size but the essential proposition has not changed.
The brunch menu runs to bistro classics: eggs Benedict a pastry basket with croissants and pain au chocolat steak tartare oysters a chicken paillard under chopped almonds and frites cited consistently as among the best in the city. The cocktail list leans French — Kir Royale a well-made Negroni and several varieties of pastis. The pace is energetic and the room is full by 11am on weekends.
Executive chef Pascal le Seac'h has run the kitchen since the reopening. Saturday and Sunday brunch runs from 10am. The bar seats walk-ins and is one of the more pleasant places in the Meatpacking District to drink a Bloody Mary and watch the neighbourhood go by.