Waverly Inn

The Best West Village Restaurants and Shops | Vogue

"If there’s a quintessential West Village restaurant, it’s the Waverly Inn: housed in a landmark brownstone, you enter into a bar area that feels like the parlor of a distinguished gentlemen, with a roaring fireplace and an oil painting of an Alpine skier. The dining room, meanwhile, boasts red vinyl booths and a sprawling mural of notable New Yorkers by Ed Sorrel. (“It’s still my favorite, about people in the village—it had a gestalt, as we say,” the artist once told The New Yorker about his now-iconic artwork. “A lot of the people in that mural were somehow my contemporaries, people I grew up either reading or knowing.”) In the back is an enclosed garden perfect for springtime dining. Although no matter the season: order the chicken pot pie." - Elise Taylor