Chambers is one of the best wine-focused restaurants in the city. Photo: Colin Clark/The New York Times/Redux
The Tribeca Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. My colleagues at Vulture have put together their guide to what to see, and I’m here in critical capacity to point you toward my favorite places to eat before or after a screening should you find yourself in the Triangle Below Canal, my ancestral home. This is not a list of the hot new places. There are plenty of new and newish restaurants in Tribeca worth your time — homey Eulalie is my favorite from the past few years, as out-of-time as the neighborhood itself — but these are the places I return to over and over again, many of them happy veterans of the burg.
Farra
71 Worth St., nr. Church St.
Michelin-starred Atera is next door, ready to oblige you with a $325 tasting menu and award-winning wine list, but I’d sooner sneak to sister Farra, which would undoubtedly cause more of a stir among the small-plate-and-village-Burgundy set if not for the long shadow of its sibling. You’ll sit, essentially, in the open kitchen, either at one of a handful of tables or a chrome bar and get credit from out-of-neighborhooders for discovering a less-touted gem. The prices here are, let’s say, Tribecan, but that puts them solidly in line with many similar establishments in and out of the neighborhood. Much attention gets lavished on Farra’s long spiral of coiled shrimp ravioli, but I come back for the solid chicken schnitzel and a much better branzino than the usual standard, in an herbal vermouth butter sauce.
Square Diner
33 Leonard St., at Varick St.
Tribeca used to have more diners — R.I.P. Socrates, for those of us who remember — but now Square Diner soldiers on with the torch alone. It’s still great. Ungentrified, unshellacked, and inarguable, Square is the kind of place every neighborhood should have, and once did. Club sandwich and fries for lunch, meatloaf for dinner. It’s a beloved institution staffed by beloved institutions: last year, when one of its longtime servers was taken by ICE, residents began a public pressure campaign and secured his release.
Walker’s
16 N Moore St., at Varick St.
Speaking of neighborhood legends: viva Walker’s. An if-you-know Tribeca favorite for decades, Walker’s has the grit of a pub and the menu of a tavern, plus enough crayons for the paper tablecloths to keep kids happy. (Young Matthew, in his crayon days, always ordered the chili.) Owner Jerry Walker passed away last December, but the bar and its thoroughly decent burger continue, and long may they. Walker’s family also owned the similarly-great Ear Inn, nudged off this particular list only for being perilously close to Soho.
Takahachi
145 Duane St., nr. W. Broadway
Nobu left Hudson Street years ago, while blue-chip omakases pop up and wither away throughout the neighborhood, but Takahachi on Duane Street has been my preferred neighborhood option for years. I know there are sushi snobs out there who turn their nose up at this 20-plus-year veteran, but for garden-variety nigiri and maki, Takahachi remains my pick (at least in the absence of dearly departed Rosanjin on the same block). Now if only Blau Gans were still open a few doors down for a nightcap afterwards.
Chambers
94 Chamber St., nr. Church St.
Greenmarket-meets-wine-cellar Chambers (f/k/a Racines) has settled into its groove in recent years, marrying Pascaline Lepeltier’s encyclopedic wine list with fancy-but-not-too locavore cooking from Jon Karis. The only downside of that is now everybody knows it, and it can be a pain to get in, even at the bar. It’s always worth a try, but if that doesn’t work out, don’t forget Terroir, the elder statesman of Tribeca wino beacons, either. That spot’s food is all over the map (literally: wild morel bucatini with PNW morels, “San Diego tacos suadero,” wiener schnitzel), but then, so is the wine, with about a zillion pours by the glass (and a “manifesto” to guide you through them all), with offerings especially deep on owner Paul Grieco’s beloved riesling.
The Odeon
145 W. Broadway, at Thomas St.
You know it and you love it. You can find technically better bistro cooking without too much trouble, but you’ll search long and hard to find a restaurant with more durably excellent vibes than Lynn Wagenknecht’s Odeon, a forty-year veteran of the neighborhood since before it was a neighborhood. There’s a reason why the fashion girls and the art gays keep flocking, jockeying for bar seats and tables alongside wizened Tribecans and local families. I keep it simple: A burger or steak always (though I hear the omelet’s a sleeper hit). And if you’re in need of a last-minute gift, a $35 Odeon hat is always warmly received.
