The Restaurant
Pastis opened in 1999 on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Little West 12th Street in the Meatpacking District, founded by Keith McNally as the third in his sequence of Manhattan brasseries after Odeon and Balthazar, and built around the specific operating idea that a French neighborhood brasserie — open from 7:30 AM to 1 AM, every meal of the day, every day of the week — could anchor what was at the time a still-industrial wholesale-meat district. It became the operating engine of the Meatpacking District's transformation across the early 2000s, the room that Vogue editors and Sex and the City scriptwriters and the fashion-show set used by reflex, and it closed in 2014 when the landlord tripled the rent. McNally rebuilt it in 2019 at 52 Gansevoort Street, two blocks west of the original, in a former warehouse whose interior was reconstructed by designer Ian McPheely as a near-identical copy of the 1999 original: zinc bar, distressed yellow tile, antique cloud-faced mirrors, hexagonal black-and-white floor tile, and the painted brass-and-glass French signage that became the Meatpacking's most photographed exterior.
The kitchen runs the classical brasserie menu with proper discipline under executive chef Joel Hough, who came to Pastis from the original Balthazar line. Breakfast runs eggs Benedict, croque madame, and oeufs en cocotte. Brunch adds the famous steak frites and a Pastis Burger that has its own following. Lunch and dinner anchor on the brasserie repertoire: a chilled raw bar with East and West Coast oysters, onion soup gratinée under a proper Gruyère crust, steak tartare prepared table-side, salade niçoise, herring with potatoes, the Pastis steak-frites with a 12-ounce hanger and proper béarnaise, a duck confit with red-cabbage compote, the boudin blanc with mashed potatoes, a brandade of cod that has been on the menu since 1999, and the daily plat du jour that the kitchen reads off the chalkboard. Dessert runs to a tarte tatin with crème fraîche, the Île flottante, the profiteroles with chocolate sauce, and a careful crème brûlée.
The wine list runs to about three hundred labels with proper depth in Loire white, Beaujolais cru, Côtes du Rhône, and a careful Champagne by-the-glass programme. The pastis itself — the anise-forward apéritif from which the room takes its name — is served with proper ceremony at the zinc bar, ice and water alongside, the cloudy louche poured in front of the guest. The bar is one of the most reliably alive in the city: the Vogue-and-fashion-week crowd still uses Pastis as the unofficial Meatpacking after-show address, and a 10:30 PM walk through the door finds the room at the same density and energy as the original. McNally has called it the only restaurant in New York that he is genuinely happy with, and the Gansevoort-Street reconstruction has carried the original's operating thesis into a second generation without losing the warmth that made the first room essential.
Why This Is NYC’s First Date Pick
Pastis is the New York first-date answer because the room itself does the social work. The zinc bar handles the pre-dinner drink without commitment — a couple meets, has the pastis-and-water ritual, and decides over a half-hour whether to sit. The antique mirrors and the low banquette lighting are visually flattering by deliberate operating choice. The all-day format means the evening can start at 6:30 PM or 9:30 PM without the kitchen reading the timing as a statement. The menu is broad enough to accommodate any appetite — a chilled platter for a light evening, the steak-frites for a more deliberate one — and the bill, for the experience, is genuinely defensible. The Meatpacking District location places the walk after the check inside one of New York's most walkable evening neighborhoods, with the High Line three blocks east and the West Village ten minutes south. The architecture of the date is built into the architecture of the room.
Leave a Review
Registered members get published by default; guest reviews are moderated first.