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Marcel<\/a><\/p>\n \n 945 Madison Ave., at E. 75th St.\n <\/p>\n \n Marcel\u2019s dining room. When Robin and Stephen Alesch decided to include a restaurant in their plans for Roman and Williams Guild, the Soho retail wing of their design studio<\/a>, it may have been out of necessity. \u201cNo one gets up on a Saturday and goes, \u2018Oh God, I\u2019m just dying to buy a sofa,\u2019\u201d Robin says. \u201cWe wanted smells, taste, and that whole sensory experience to be part of the shopping.\u201d That restaurant, La Mercerie<\/a>, became famous in its own right for its luxe trappings and chef Marie-Aude Rose\u2019s classical French cooking. This week, the entire team is expanding quite a way uptown with Marcel<\/a>, inside the brutalist Breuer building that is home to Sotheby\u2019s (in the soaring, concrete-clad room that was previously Danny Meyer\u2019s first Untitled and Ignacio Mattos\u2019s Flora Bar).<\/p>\n \u201cStephen and I have always been interested in reigniting great pieces of architecture that sometimes become a little frozen,\u201d says Robin. \u201cThis building had soul and that potential. And so we thought, Could this become the uptown sibling of La Mercerie?\u201d<\/p>\n Underneath a concrete bridge that connects the building to Madison Avenue, the Breuer\u2019s former sculpture garden has been reimagined as a more casual extension of the dining room \u2014 starting next month, it will be open for breakfast and lunch with a marble bar, umbrellas, and plush patio furniture. It also features a new, private entrance from the street level, in an effort to reinforce Marcel\u2019s status as a destination of its own right, not just a cafeteria for Sotheby\u2019s employees and patrons.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have this tension between the masculine and feminine, uptown and downtown, old and new,\u201d says Rose. The same tension, she explains, is true of the food at Marcel. Rose is especially excited to dive deeper into French classics, like a beef terrine with horseradish, haricots verts, and Muscat gel\u00e9e; gratins of cod; and consomm\u00e9 with bone marrow. They\u2019re dishes La Mercerie\u2019s Soho audience \u201cmight not appreciate\u201d in quite the same way she believes an uptown crowd, which has proved more than willing to embrace more traditional French cooking if the comeback of Le Veau d\u2019Or<\/a> is any indication, might. (But then, the menu\u2019s \u201cQue Voulez-vous?\u201d section may tempt the area\u2019s more \u2026 particular guests who will be able to request turbot, salmon, or hangar steak simply cooked exactly as they\u2019d like.)<\/p>\n There\u2019s more: \u201cMarie bakes a ton, and so we always wanted to put a bakery in La Mercerie, but just didn\u2019t have the room,\u201d Robin says. Here, a separate bakery offers all-day counter service with baby-blue boxes of yuzu, raspberry, and chocolate-filled madeleines, breads, croissants, and entremets. (Large-format cakes like a Hungarian Dobos torte, flan Parisien, or strawberries-and-cream tart are available for preorder, as well.) Also available to go: select bottles from the wine list, which \u2014 because it pulls from the Sotheby\u2019s cellar \u2014 grants access to vintages typically only offered through private auctions.<\/p>\n That association with the auction house extends to the d\u00e9cor, which features rotating pieces from the Sotheby\u2019s collection: Paintings from Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler face each other above the banquets, while a Lalanne lamb watches from a corner. Glass vitrines scattered among the dining room contain a T. rex tooth as well as vintage jewelry from Pierre Cardin and Andrew Grima. On the way to the restroom, you might pass a Calder or a Lichtenstein. See something you like? This isn\u2019t a museum: Make an offer and see what happens. \u201cThe collection in the dining room will change every few months,\u201d Robin says, \u201cso it might be an entirely different restaurant from one visit to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Steak hach\u00e9 \u00e0 la Fran\u00e7aise. Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
\n Photo: Rich Stapleton\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9601af28994aa203130236952dbaba4ec5-030426-Savory-SteakHache-055.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Nico Schinco\n <\/p>\n
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the April 20, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n