Below 14th Street

Three spots we love to go to all the time …

Grilled bread with peas, pea shoots, and favas at Anton’s.

The irregular streets of New York City’s West Village shape the way you think and feel about the place. It’s a quirky neighborhood. These streets were created organically, carved out by the indigenous peoples of Manahatta, by commerce growing north from the tip of Manhattan beginning in the early 1600s, by natural creeks and swamps and arbors and farmland.

The West Village. (Not that I don’t love Cluny, Little Owl, and Commerce Inn, but if someone can tell me how to get rid of these pins so I just have a clean map, I’ll be grateful.)

In 1811, New York’s City Council adopted the plan to turn Manhattan into the grid of streets that exists today. But landowners below 14th Street, including Clement Clarke Moore, fought to preserve their streets and won. And so we have the wonderful disorder of the West Village where, for instance, West 4th St. and West 12th Street are perpendicular to one another rather than parallel. It’s confusing to navigate but fun! Ann still loses her way in the Grove Street area.

The restaurants that follow are some of our favorite West Village restaurants. They give us pleasure regularly throughout the year and are all eminently worth seeking out if you haven’t been.

Anton’s …

This is a lovely little spot around the corner from us at Hudson and West 11th, serving some of our favorite pastas in the city. Nick Anderer and his partner in business and life, Natalie Johnson, opened the restaurant—egad!—in November 2019, with the pandemic shutdown just four months away. Happily, they survived and are thriving (with plans for more, about which I’m bound to secrecy). Anton’s is named after Nick’s great-great grandfather, who brought the family from Germany to the US in the 1800s.

West Village restaurants and the now ubiquitous Resy/Open Table system of online reservations make actual reservations notoriously difficult to get in this neighborhood. I tried for a reservation here for six people recently and had no luck online. But I stopped by in person and the host happily found me a table for the following Saturday. A good strategy, showing up at the restaurant personally, especially at a time when it’s not busy.

We began with a blast-of-spring starter, grilled bread, favas, peas, and pea shoots (top photo), a fabulous simple dish featuring the season. The pastas were likewise simple and soul satisfying (clockwise from top left): lemon pasta, mushroom ravioli, pasta Amatriciana (I just wrote about this dish), and pasta Francese. Ann ordered the latter, created by Chef Nick, one of the simplest pastas of all, based on the chicken Francese he always ordered at Gene’s, an old-school Italian restaurant and Greenwich Village landmark. Nick makes a simple lemon-butter sauce and tops the dish with lots of toasted bread crumbs for crunch. Outstanding.

Friendly service, a casual, old-school atmosphere, and delicate but toothsome pasta make this a regular spot for us. (I’ve included a quick video of its interior at the end of this newsletter.)

570 Hudson St., (212) 924-0818

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And More Pasta …

Pasta carbonara at Barbuto.

When Ann and I have an occasion to celebrate—Ann’s birthday, the pub day of a novel, or just because—there’s one place we usually find ourselves: Barbuto. It was, after all, where we had our wedding lunch in April 2017. But that was at its original spot, in a former gas station at West 12th and Washington, with glass doors that slid up garage-style. It was across from our apartment where we could watch the lively street scene of sidewalk dining from our fire escape. 

Sadly, the building was sold to a company developing ultra-luxury apartments and Barbuto was forced out. In addition to the loss of this beloved spot and having to endure the eyesore of scaffolding still surrounding the building four years later, the tone of the of the surrounding streets has changed. The loss of Barbuto made clear how important restaurants are to an urban neighborhood. Without Barbuto there, and having lost the the longstanding Tortilla Flats across the street, these corners are dark now and have considerably less foot traffic after dark, making the corner of West 12th and Washington St. a quieter, lonelier part of the West Village.

There is still the comfortable Entwine with its terrific bar next to the erstwhile Tortilla Flats, and a line of restaurants south along Washington Street, but West 12th and Washington is not the bustling corner it once was.

During the pandemic, the absolute lack of foot traffic and people lingering outside restaurants and bars due to lockdown, made the West Village feel like the seedy, dangerous place it had been in the 1980s. Lockdown showed us vividly how important businesses that stay open late are to the safety and feel of a neighborhood.

Happily, with the advent of dining sheds, the West Village street scene has never been more lively.