You Should Try New York’s New Restaurant Cathedrale

Cathedrale Dining Room

Cathedrale

Since Cathedrale, the French-Mediterranean restaurant that opened in New York’s  Moxy East Village hotel a week ago, is a production of Tao Group Hospitality, there’s an expectation that the setting will be showy, the food less important. That’s due to its flashy Asian restaurants, Tao Asian Bistro, with locations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Las Vegas that are always mentioned first as a buzzing, colorful scene but less so for their authentic versions of Asian cuisines. With Cathedrale, though, there’s a definite move to get the culinary presentations to the level of the design. And in most cases, they succeed.

The roasted tomato, onion and olive tart.

Laurie Werner

The first impression, though, as always is that the setting designed by The Rockwell Group is outrageously dramatic. It’s also huge. The room, said to echo the architecture of Fillmore East, the 60’s landmark in the neighborhood known as the “church of rock n’ roll,” does suggest a cathedral with a soaring 26 foot ceiling draped in a 19 foot wire mesh sculpture by Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi that with the name of “Fillmore” underscores the point. The room is dark and moody, enlivened with electric blue sashes suspended from the sculpted ceiling.

Tarte Tropezienne

Laurie Werner

Within that panorama, the food is going to have to fight to compete and with the exception of a pallid spin on pissaladiere, the usually robust Nicoise dish of onions, anchovies, herbs and olives on a pizza like crust (in this version with gruyere and tomatoes in place of the anchovies) the dishes do. The menu is a mix of greatest hits from coastal Southern France with drop ins from Spain, Italy and Greece: a zesty Tomato Provencal with capers, shallots and champagne vinegar, a similarly lively hamachi crudo with green apple, celery and black olive oil, and perfectly cooked, tender lamb chops with mint and pistachio tapenade among them. Desserts such as Tarte Tropezienne and warm chocolate torte with lavender milk ice cream match the earlier dishes in quality.

Cathedrale Bar with neon signs paying homage to other East Village concert halls.

Cathedrale

Elsewhere in the restaurant, neon signs point to other past concert halls in the neighborhood and psychedelic posters line the walls of the private dining room. But despite the raffish tone and the young crowd spilling over from the Moxy, the chef responsible, Executive Chef Jason Hall, formerly of Gotham Bar & Grill in collaboration with Tao Group’s Ralph Scamardella, has a serious pedigree and it shows. This restaurant has more going for it than looks.