"Tucked inside the new Fifth Avenue Hotel , a 19th-century mansion turned exuberantly designed bolthole, is Café Carmellini, courtesy Andrew Carmellini, the chef behind Downtown favorites like Locanda Verde, Lafayette, and the Dutch. Its interiors mirror the old-school elegance of the building: Blue velvet and mustard leather chairs and banquets sit strikingly against Art Deco mirrors, concentric-circle chandeliers with more bulbs that I could count, and two very large trees that stretch up to the double-storeyed ceiling. There are plenty of seats to pick from (I have my eye on the bar seats for oysters and martinis the next time I visit), but for prime vantage, sit on the upper level with its opera-style box seats. The menu here draws on various sources of inspiration: some of Carmellini’s dishes are more personal, like the Shrimp Colonnata, a nod to a village near his family’s hometown in Tuscany, and the Grapefruit Sorbetto, an ode to his nonna; others are classic Italian like the duck tortellini; and still others that are homages to other great chefs, like the Scallops Cardoz, a touching tribute to the late Floyd Cardoz, who Carmellini worked with in the ‘90s. An 1800-bottle-deep wine menu accompanies dinner service as does a tight list of classic cocktails, but you’d do well to leave room for a nightcap at the hotel’s wood-paneled Portrait Bar down the corridor.— Arati Menon, digital director" - CNT Editors
