Cafe Charmant Opens in the West Village in NYC From Catch Hospitality
“I think the most exciting thing you can do is re-envision classic formatting in a way that has real perspective and real depth,” chef Jake Tyler Brodsky tells Observer.
At Cafe Charmant, which Eugene Remm, Tilman Fertitta and Catch Hospitality Group are opening with Brodsky in the West Village on Tuesday, September 15, the goal is to create a different kind of brasserie. Remm has been to Keith McNally’s Pastis hundreds of times, but he wants Cafe Charmant to be “nothing like Pastis.”
“Pastis is phenomenal, and it already exists,” Remm tells Observer. “The worst thing we could have done is just create Pastis on Bleecker Street. It would have been my nightmare. And then this conversation would come with some rolling eyes and be like, ‘OK, so you just took Pastis, put it in this cool place, put your little spin on it, and that’s cute. Congratulations.’”
So Brodsky, a native New Yorker and former boxer who cooked at Eleven Madison Park and then ran the kitchen at Palm Heights in Grand Cayman, is delivering a globally inspired and free-spirited coastal take on brasserie cuisine.
Brodsky is making tuna tartare that’s a “bit less composed, a bit more free-form” with luxurious chutoro, Jimmy Nardello peppers, olives and saffron aioli. This “fun and casual” version of tuna tartare, which comes with chips and is a nod to how people eat in Marseille, is a statement of purpose. Brodsky doesn’t want the formality or fanciful frills of Eleven Madison Park at Cafe Charmant.
“I don’t want to be told where my carrot was grown,” he says. “I don’t want things to be fussy.”
Remm fell in love with Brodsky’s food when he vacationed at the Palm Heights resort.
He asked the staff about the chef who created the menu and learned that Brodsky had recently departed the hotel after seven years there. When Remm tracked Brodsky down to discuss working together, the chef was traveling the world as he pondered his next move.
Brodsky went to Southeast Asia and then to Japan, Korea, Marseille and Capri. He tasted local ingredients and cooked at pop-ups. He spent almost eight months traveling, and it turns out this was perfect R&D for Cafe Charmant.
Cafe Charmant has a dish called crispy shrimp Polynesian. The inspiration for the dish came after Brodsky held a pop-up in Capri, following a trip to Vietnam.
“I was kind of like, oh, the world of a stuffed squash blossom meets the kind of way Vietnamese people eat shrimp with a lot of fresh herbs,” Brodsky says. “So we have a hoja santa leaf and a very simple wild shrimp farce. It has some seasoned peppers, and then you have a squash blossom fanned out over the top. That gets put in a really delicate, beautiful tempura batter. When it comes out, we put some acacia honey on it and this blend of green sansho peppercorn, pink peppercorn, fennel and fennel pollen.”
For steak frites, Brodsky is making tamarind chutney and using it instead of white wine in the base of Cafe Charmant’s peppercorn sauce. Cafe Charmant’s version of Milanese involves American-grown Ibérico pork in a mojo brine and yassa onions cooked down with Scotch bonnet peppers, lemon juice and mustard. Brodsky’s moules-frites merges aji amarillo with crème fraîche. His duck pastels feature a Trinidadian-style curry with fresh coconut milk.
Brodsky likes the idea of elegant food that can get a bit messy. He’s clearly a chef who understands that all kinds of elements blend in New York.
“Being in New York, there are all these influences, and you’re around a ton of culture,” he says.
And, of course, the diversity of the city itself is a primary ingredient at impossible-to-book destinations like Torrisi and Tatiana. Speaking of impossible-to-book, Remm and Catch Hospitality Group have been on a tear at The Corner Store, The 86 and Or’esh (another culture-blending wonderland that people are clamoring to visit). It’s been a remarkable run of perpetually packed restaurants since The Corner Store opened in September 2024.
Remm calls Observer when he’s on his way to a team lunch on The 86’s one-year anniversary on a September Friday. For Remm, all this success is a purely New York story.
“I try to mitigate my travel, and that’s the beauty of what I’m doing,” Remm says. “I live in the West Village, and I want to walk to work. If you want to scale a business and you have an entrepreneurial spirit but you want to also be close to your family, there’s no better place that has density, diversity and the epicenter of all things, tourism and business and arts.”
Remm knows his hot spots are hard to get into, but he wants to have restaurants that guests will want to visit again and again for the food and the vibe. He went to Eleven Madison Park once and felt mentally fatigued and struggled to make conversation during the third hour of the meal, but he’s been to the more relaxed NoMad Bar dozens of times. He knows what his comfort zone is.
“I love that the tasting menu is dead,” Remm says. “I don’t ever want it again.”
Brodsky shares a similar sensibility. He learned a lot at Eleven Madison Park, but he didn’t love the food there.
“I think you can introduce people to a lot of things that sometimes can seem stuffy or foodie in a way that’s a bit easier and more digestible,” he says. “I think a reinterpretation of the bistro or brasserie is more exciting than what classic fine dining is considered right now.”
Cafe Charmant, located at 340 Bleecker St., New York, NY 10014, will be open Tuesday-Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.