West Village Favorite Rosemary’s Is Opening a Sunny All-Day Italian Cafe Nearby

One year in, West Village pizzeria Rosemary’s Pizza is doing a big switch-up.

Owner Carlos Suarez — the longtime West Village restaurateur behind neighborhood stalwarts Rosemary’s and Claudette — is taking the focus off pizza and expanding restaurant hours, the idea being to convert it to an all-day Italian-style cafe. Later this month, he’ll introduce new breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus with a lot more than pizza on them: Think cacio e pepe egg sandwiches in the morning and roast chicken at night.

The new iteration of the restaurant at 1 Perry St. will be called Roey’s, named after his mom Rosemary’s nickname. “As the nickname suggests, Roey’s is the more intimate, personal version of Rosemary’s,” Suarez says, referring to his popular nearby Italian restaurant.

Roey’s, which arrives on May 16, will look a little different, too. The sun-filled, 40- to 50-seat dining room will spill onto the sidewalk on Greenwich Avenue, and a separate coffee bar and takeaway counter has been added. The new coffee bar will have a separate entrance on Perry Street; at night, it’ll turn into an Italian-inspired aperitivo bar with wine and Spritz-like cocktails on tap — an addition Suarez hopes will pull in neighbors at all hours of the day.

Expect an all-day menu with salads and vegetable dishes like roasted carrots with stracciatella. For breakfast, that cacio e pepe egg sandwich and miso oatmeal will be available, and for lunch, lighter fare like salads, vegetables, and sandwiches will be the focus.

Dinner options will include roast chicken and the dry-aged meatballs that first appeared on the pizzeria menu. Some pizzas will make a comeback, too, especially old favorites broccoli rabe and stracciatella pie, Suarez says. And it will all be available to-go at the takeaway counter.

Suarez opened Rosemary’s Pizza last summer with a menu centered on Neapolitan-style pizzas and salads — but after a year in, he says that the pizza concept was “too limiting” and that a cafe would better suit the neighborhood.

“Obviously we thought Rosemary’s Pizza would be perhaps more successful than it ended up being,” Suarez tells Eater. “We feel this is an amazing opportunity to break new grounds and explore what a cafe can be in 2019.”

He’s pushing to make Roey’s a family-friendly place, with a children’s library planned for the dining room. He also wants to offer a school lunch program at the takeaway counter, where families can pick up healthy meals to-go before dropping kids off at school. A separate cookbook library is also in the works, all part of making the space feel like a “warm” cafe, he says.

The switch-up goes live on May 16 and the new hours will be: breakfast from 7 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; lunch until 5 p.m.; and dinner until 11 p.m. on Monday through Friday. Brunch will kick in on the weekends from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.