Alison Eighteen Restaurant Serves Up Neighborhood Bistro Charm

Does the thought of another celebrity restaurant leave a less than glitterati exhaustion?

Does another heart palpitating focus on the personality, the architect, the décor, or the Twitter “feed” – rather than the food on the plate - cook up a yearning for a more simple time when restaurant dining was not a pilot for reality TV?

Then Alison Eighteen restaurant on 18^th Street is an oasis – a return to that time when the sum was greater than the parts. 

If when perusing the bistro menu it all seems a bit like a dining dream from the era of New York Times’ food critic William Grimes – it is. 

Alison Eighteen is like finding your high school sweetheart – and falling in love all over again.

The restaurant is the latest incarnation of restaurateur, Alison Price Becker  -- her previous multi-stared dining establishment, Alison on Dominick – was a classic, sophisticated, destination for romantics and business diners who could count on the ambiance and consistent food quality to impress and delight.

Alison Price Becker, Managing Partner, Alison Eighteen

Including the location-as-name, not much has changed.  In a reprisal of a role she has played well, Alison continues to reign over her culinary domain in the tradition of legendary maître d’s and owners of decades gone by-- and well, Alison herself who set a benchmark for hospitality.  Take that Danny Meyer!

She is not a celebrity chef. She doesn’t employ one in the kitchen – although executive chef Robert Gurvich knows his way around the kitchen as well as any Top Chef. 

Allison enjoys attending to her guests and managing the dining experience.

The ambience is deliberate, calculated to vanish the work and stress of dining (take pictures! Tweet! Share!) and puts the bliss of eating and enjoying conversation while sitting on a lush banquette surrounded by beauty lighting and urbane design.  

The whimsical Payton Cosell Turner toile-like wallpaper are line drawing that not unlike a Hirschfield’s Nina, whisper the moniker, “Alison,” lest one forget where they are and who they are guests of.  

The evening I enjoyed a lovely dinner at Alison Eighteen with a special guest from the City of Angels, Joni Saphir, the restaurant was full, but didn’t feel like the ber-hip L train. 

One could be seen or feel the privacy of retreat at one’s table.

Alison herself stopped by to talk.  “For our clients, the restaurant is like coming home,” she noted. “I am so blessed,” she smiled.  “I can’t tell you how much I love the people – seeing old faces – lots of former clients have returned.”

When asked how Alison came to be on 18, she told her story since closing Alison on Dominick.  Many might be surprised to learn she never got out of the restaurant business when she got out of Manhattan; rather she was consulting, owned and managed a trinity of restaurants in the Hamptons, including Alison by the Beach and Alison Restaurant and the Maidstone Inn; did product development and worked with her now-partners, Michael Namer and Gary Spindler to develop the space she now occupies. Originally, the space was meant to be a hotel.  Grinning conspiratorially, she recalls asking them: “You want me to put Alison in the space, don’t you?”

“It was time,” she concluded.

Here she remains devoted to a neighborhood clientele – luring diners from the Flatiron area as well as the Village and beyond.

She remarks that she is proud of the dining scene. “The atmosphere is designed to please you, to make you relax.” 

The timeless elegance does just that.

Her goal is to provide the neighborhood restaurant that customers can fall into – just stop in for a drink at the bar or a meal there  -- or in the glamorous dining room.

They also serve breakfast, lunch, brunch and take out, or as they refer to it: the “Kiosk to Go Menu” with bakery, charcuterie, and cheese.

And with 20% off drinks and complimentary nibbles (who says “nibbles” these days?!) served daily from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, Alison on Eighteen is sure to be the meet-up restaurant of choice.

The names alone will seduce, grouped in categories such as: Delicate Debauchery, Sultry & Seasonal, with fresh, seasonal herbs and spirits.  Dare to resist.  

They also do parties and catering for custom dining occasions, with an ability to serve up to 150 guests.

The bistro boasts a rotisserie that, along with Chef Robert’s spices and sauces, serves up delicious, slow-cooked meats.  The lamb was superb.  

The market-driven menu changes with the seasons.  The red peppers with chilies appetizer was tasty for two. Alison knows her way around the waters of Long Island, so be

sure to try the Long Island black bass with artichokes, cockles (love saying that!), cannellini beans & chorizo.

The wine list is diminutive but balanced.  Here’s to a more extended list with more reasonably priced wine selections to match up to the superb menu offerings.  Dinner was finished off with a nice glass of 20-year old Fonseca port, fresh espresso and a toast to the return of Alison.

The Zen of “simple” is not easy.

Welcome home, Alison.

There is a lot going on at Alison Eighteen.

Hours are:

The Kiosk is open from 8am to closing

Lunch: Mon-Fri: 12pm to 3pm

Dinner: Sun-Thurs: 6pm to 11pm, Fri-Sat: 6pm to 11:30pm

Brunch: Sat and Sun: 11am to 3pm

Alison Eighteen is located at 15 West 18^th Street, New York, NY 10011

212-366-1818  (Don’t you just love her attention to detail? Even the phone number trills “18!” 

Plus they answer the phone and don’t play those reservation games many restaurants do where the script goes like “Let me see, I have 5pm or 11pm open,” only to learn they in fact have many seats available…

Greenwich Village’s Di Fiore Marquet Café serves up exceptional Merguez sausage

Stepping into the Greenwhich Village neighborhood restaurant Di Fiore Marquette Café, (www.difioremarquetcafe.com) one can be forgiven for thinking they’ve entered a Right Bank café or a French countryside auberge’s charmed dining room, worthy of a Truffaut movie set or a scene from the “French Kiss.”  

The out of time fantasy restaurant is a sensual delight.

Di Fiore Bar Seating

The entranceway embraces happy, full-paned grilled windows on either side of the door, cuddling tete a tete seating: perfect for a romantic, coffee-fueled interlude or a business meet up; glass pastry cases whose resident fresh croissants and brioche wink “take me, pick me,” along with a few seats at what can be described as the love child of a mid-century five and dime counter and a low-slung bar that inherited the sterling genes of a good place to eat, especially as a single.  

The unpretentious, glorious seasonal flowers are overflowing in a pitcher near the register.  Transported while waiting to ring up, one can dream about the bouquet’s journey from Greenmarket floral stall via basket or bike—along with a fresh baked loaf of bread.  The reverie is sprung by the hum of fresh juice squeezings, with cappuccino and espresso keeping harmony.

The long narrowish dining room is marked with antique silver mirror glass, sexy, lipstick red walls, menus and appointments. It seems every wall space is filled with framed paintings.  All are for sale.

At the back of the restaurant, casement windows spool out to a picture-perfect garden setting. The bistro size wood tables are accessorized with simple, easy favorite flowers such as tulips, roses, or Peruvian lilies. No tortured blossoms or florist egos are present here to compete with the food and the conversation.

And it is the conversation and stories that help make Marquette unique. 

Celeste Di Fiore -- Inimitable restauranteur

Make no mistake. While the décor and ambiance are heartbreakingly embraceable and the food is the star of the show, it is owner Celeste Di Fiore who is the real–deal charmer – the Elaine of the downtown, Village cohort. 

For more than 10 years, she's looked after her customers like a doting, sometimes worrisome, always supportive, can’t-help-herself favorite friend or aunt. The customers are neighborhoodies: from the nearby Forbes magazine staff, the creative artists and patrons of the Salmagundi artist colony; writers and authors; along with students and professors from the Cardoza law school on the corner, or NYU. There are the quiet celebrities: Meryl Streep, Sean Pean and Giada De Laurentiis' mom, to name a few. Like a butterfly, Celeste can be seen alighting at a table to ask about the customers latest book, or another’s health, or to agree with another about the neighborhood’s lack of a grocery store due to changing real estate, while ensuring his weekly take out dinner is all set.

Meeting with Celeste for a Merguez tasting is not just learning about this distinctive food. 

There is a story behind the venerable North African or Mediterranean sausage.

In what may make six degrees of separation look easy, this merguez culinary discovery resonates as part of Celeste and her Italian family’s roots and how she came to own the restaurant and to her accountant's involvement with merguez, working as he does for the Brooklyn Bangers butcher shop – and the Vanderbilt restaurant, there– but that’s another story.

John the accountant brought some of the merguez for Celeste to sample. “It was delicious. But I almost had a stroke,” she laughs now. That sausage was made with lamb – and pork! She knew no Muslim or Yeshiva customers who frequent her restaurant could eat the pork.  

Besides. True merguez should be lamb and beef, according to her first experience with the sausage gleaned from Jean Pierre Marquette and Lynne Guillot – her former partners.

Jean Pierre and Lynne served merguez on a baguette, with the juice soaked up in the bread, all wrapped up in napkin.

Informed by her first merguez, Celeste prefers a simple presentation. 

Today, her merguez is good enough to stand alone.

Di Fiore's Marquette’s Merguez Sausage from “Brooklyn Bangers” menu item is a Mediterranean-influenced dish marinated in fresh olive oil and thyme.

It is delicious.  It is spicy.  The heat is just right. The restaurant cooks it just right too: on the charcoal grill to impart a smoky, earthy flavor, then in the oven for five to eight minutes.

Celeste explains her kitchen cooks came up with their sterling mint-infused chimichurri dipping sauce.  It is perfect; light but stalwart enough to stand up to the juicy, muscular lamb and beef merguez.

Celeste has it served with big grain Israeli cous cous, mint, julienned fresh, market vegetables including squash, haricot vert beans, grape tomatoes; and potato salad sautéed with a little butter, olive oil and pearl tapioca.  (The tapioca adds strength)  

       Look at this sausage: 

An organic, noble Bricco al Sole Mantepulciano wine, rich and robust with high tannins complimented the entrée. 

Over the course of eating the meal, Celeste shares some of Marquette’s art-fueled stories.

Prompted by a long-ago customer/artist and Celeste’s desire to “warm it up a bit” in the restaurant – a change from her former partners’ more industrial style, the burgeoning talent asked to bring a few paintings to sell. Over time, there occurred an entropic progression toward the Marquette’s dining in a gallery ambiance.

That first hopeful act of art was the catalyst to scores of fascinating, twisted, successful and inexplicable but true tales.  

Celeste reviews a customer's just-purchased art work

Sit with Celeste and she will tell you a story about the art and the artist for every one of the pieces.  Each is recounted with pride, an abiding protection for the artist, along with a resignation and perhaps secret delight for the vagaries that are life.  Artists are grateful for the exposure – and hoped for sales—and at the same time, the stories sometimes sound more like entries at the City Desk.  For example, there is the one about the man who purchased a painting, insisted on leaving the artwork at the restaurant until his check cleared while he left for Egypt. Some years later, the painting awaits his return…Then there is the couple that continues to amass a collection, it seems, buying the art that smiles down on them at their favorite table.

Sadly, dessert suspended more art stories. The macchiato was freshly made as a thick, frosty milk shake of espresso with dollops of milky foam peaks.    

A rather perfunctory search of restaurants that serve marguez in New York turned up less than a handful: one in Queens and the other is Manhattan’s Colicchio & Sons (www.coliccchioandsons.com confirming how special and uncommon Marquette’s merguez menu offering is. 

Di Fiore’s merguez seduction as calling card delivers.  Don’t miss it – for lunch or dinner.

Soon, Celeste will be stopping by your table to tell or hear a story, as you will have become a Marquette regular, devoted customer.  

 Marquette is located at:

15 East 12th Street

New York, NY 10003 (Between University and Fifth Avenue)

And on Facebook

212-229-9313

Open for breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, and wine. Delivery and catering.