Hadn’t been to Danny Meyer’s Flatiron District Gramercy Tavern since before the pandemic (I did stop by to support them by buying take-out.) I was eager to see how they fared.

The Tavern, open since 1994, offers contemporary American cuisine and warm hospitality. Their accolades include three New York Times stars, one Michelin star, the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant and the Best Chef: NYC award for Michael Anthony.

When you dine, you have two choices the fixed-price-only dining room or the bustling bar area. We chose the more casual Tavern with our informative server Derek offering suggestions — many of which we followed.

We started with three starters served in two courses. The tomato and plums topped with brioche crouton were fine, although we would have preferred more of the plums.  The dish’s sauce blended ricotta with pureed cashews ($20).

The duck liver mousse blended with creme fraiche and butter (heavenly decadent!) came with grilled sourdough bread, cherry jam and pickled veggies ($21).

Next was our grilled corn flatbread ($23) topped with a honey-blended corn puree, a Fresno and shishito pepper puree, all topped with flaked corn and fresh peppers, parsley and a few pieces of unnecessary calamari ($21) We would have passed on this dish had we known that they’d serve us complimentary delicious flatbread

Then we shared — and they divided the dish in the kitchen for us – the highly recommended duck (yes, duck) meatloaf with potatoes and tomatillos ($34).  It isn’t gamey as they blend the ground meat with duck fat and serve it with a sauce made from tomatillos.

Knowing I was off to New Orlean’s Cafe du Monde the following week, we decided to try their vanilla beignets for comparison. These larger donuts came with plum jam and ginger cream ($18); although they were good, I like the smaller beignets better. As chocolate lovers, we also sampled their gooey chocolate pudding cake with mascarpone cream, pecans and coconut ($18)

Lucky us, Michael Anthony was in the house and stopped by to say hi. Always a pleasure to see him!

Gramercy Tavern
Gramercy/Flatiron
42 E 20th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 477-0777
gramercytavern.com/