Tartinery Nolita
209 Mulberry Street
Tel: 212-300-5838
Designer: Michel Abboud

With the recently opened Tartinery, owner Nicolas Dutko has adapted a classic bistro formula for a modern Mulberry Street setting. Dutko worked closely with SOMA Architects’ Michel Abboud, a Lebanese-born architect who splits his time between New York and Beirut, on the restaurant’s design. Glass panes of varying widths are interspersed between metal columns dressed in black satin paint to form Tartinery’s signature storefront, intended to evoke a barcode. Keeping with the motif of industrial-sleek simplicity, the interior features a concrete bar—poured on-site—on the restaurant’s more casual upper level, along with exposed brick adorned by a metal mesh-like grate that recalls stone-filled gabions. “It’s rustic, but the black metal gives the walls a very clean look,” Dutko said. The team transformed reclaimed wood from a Tribeca building—also used on the ceiling—into a staircase that leads patrons down to Tartinery’s double-height main dining room. In the more intimate and nearly windowless downstairs area, where a Ficus tree grows through a central table, a brick fireplace spans the full height of the restaurant, adding a final retro-contemporary touch to this striking Nolita space.