West Village 9s

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CULTURE & LEISURE • Friday Routine

Special bottles

GABRIEL KREUTHER • chef & owner • Gabriel Kreuther Hospitality
Neighborhood you work in: Bryant Park & Hudson Yards
Neighborhood you live in: Chelsea

It’s Friday afternoon, how are you rolling into the weekend?
As a chef, my weekend is Sunday! So as Saturday evening’s dinner service winds down, I like to take stock of what went well, what went wrong, and what needs improvement from the past week. If I’m at Hudson Yards, I’ll do my best to walk home and use that time to unwind and reflect on how to spend my day off with family and friends.

My latest project is Saverne (opened Monday -ed.), a modern wood-fired brasserie at Hudson Yards that’s been a true labor of love. The concept marries the soul of classic French brasserie cooking with the primal, honest flavors you only get from cooking over live fire. There’s something almost meditative about working with wood — you’re never fully in control, and I think that keeps you humble and present in a way that a gas range never quite demands of you.

Where are you drinking or dining this weekend?
I have a collection of wines at home, and on Sundays I enjoy a bottle with the family and just decompress. Lately, I’ve been working through some bottles I’m really fond of: Mission Haut-Brion 2008, Le Pavillon 2019, Léoville Las Cases 2002, and most recently, Mouton Rothschild 2002. These are wines that reward patience and reflection, which feels right for a day off.

This year I’m also celebrating a collaboration I’ve been incredibly excited about with Marie Zusslin of Valentin Zusslin, a remarkable Alsatian producer whose wines feel like a natural extension of everything my restaurants are about. The Alsace connection runs deep for me, and working with a domaine that has that much history and integrity has been genuinely rewarding. What made it even more personal: I was able to bring in one of my favorite artists, Flore Sigrist — the same painter whose work hangs in Gabriel Kreuther’s main dining room — to help shape the label.

When we go out, it’s very much a family affair — my daughter sets the agenda, so the places need to be welcoming and relaxed. We love Cafe Chelsea and Lil’ Frankie’s in the East Village. Both have that warmth and ease that makes you feel like a regular even when the room is buzzing.

Any weekend getaways?
Block Island is one of our favorite escapes. It has that perfect laid-back New England quality without any of the pretension you sometimes find in the Hamptons or Nantucket. The ferry ride alone is worth it. You watch the city fall away behind you and by the time you arrive you’ve already exhaled. It’s a true escape in the most honest sense of the word, and my daughter loves it.

What was your last great vacation?
Calabash in Grenada — a Relais & Châteaux property that embodies everything that designation is supposed to mean — is extraordinary. What strikes you immediately is how authentic the culture feels. Grenada isn’t trying to be another Caribbean destination. It has its own identity, its own rhythms, its own food. The spice island nickname is earned.

My getaway last year to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee was less of a simple vacation and more of a full sensory immersion. Chefs obviously have a highly developed sense of taste, but the other senses — smell, sound, touch, and sight — are always being leveraged, and it’s impossible for me to switch that off just because I’m off the clock. Every moment there felt like a curated experience for the senses.

But if Blackberry Farm fed the American soul in me, Switzerland has always nourished something deeper and more ancestral. Zermatt, Verbier, the Gruyère region — these are places that shaped my understanding of what food and landscape can mean to each other. The Gruyère region in particular is almost impossibly moving for a chef. You are standing in the valley where one of the world’s great cheeses has been made for centuries, looking up at the Alps, and everything makes complete sense. The relationship between the grass, the cows, the milk, the cheese, the people — it is a closed, perfect loop that modern gastronomy spends enormous energy trying to recreate, and never quite manages.

What store or service do you always recommend?
These are my favorite New York institutions, and I recommend them without hesitation to anyone who asks.

• Katz’s Deli is one of the great New York experiences. The pastrami, the controlled chaos, the ticket system, the history soaked into every inch of that room on Houston Street. It’s irreplaceable, and I genuinely worry about a world without it. Go, eat standing up if you must, tip your carver well, and order the pastrami on rye.

• Russ & Daughters is perhaps the most perfect food shop in America. I mean that without exaggeration. What that family has maintained on Houston Street since 1914 — the quality, the craft, the integrity — is a masterclass in what it means to take your product seriously across generations. The smoked fish alone is worth a pilgrimage. If you haven’t been to the café around the corner, go immediately.

• And Keens Steakhouse is one of those rooms that makes you proud to cook in this city. The mutton chop, the history, the pipes on the ceiling, the sense that you’re sitting somewhere that’s mattered for a very long time, and intends to keep mattering. There’s a lesson in that for any restaurateur.

Where are you donating your time or money?

• The Autism Speaks Celebrity Chef Gala brings our industry together around something important, and I love that food becomes the vehicle for that conversation. There’s something powerful about a table full of chefs cooking for a cause. It’s what we do, redirected toward something larger than a restaurant.

• The work I’m most focused on right now is leading the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Hospitality Roundtable. The mental health crisis in our industry is real and it has been quietly devastating. We lose people. We don’t talk about it enough, and the culture of toughness that defines professional kitchens can make it genuinely dangerous to ask for help.

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RESTAURANTS • The Nines

Restaurants, West Village

Nine FOUND favorites west of Seventh Avenue South. More of our NYC neighborhood favorites: Upper West Side, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill & Boerum Hill.

• The Commerce Inn (above), Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s most under-the-radar (and therefore accessible) spot, for cozy tavern vibes, reserve