An Abstract American Restaurant From an Award-Winning Chef Is Headed to Soho

Acclaimed fine dining chef Shaun Hergatt will make his return to cooking for the New York City public this fall with the opening of new Soho restaurant the Vestry.

The Vestry, inside the Dominick hotel at 246 Spring St. between Varick Street and Sixth Avenue, will be a little more casual than Hergatt’s former venue Juni, which featured a one-Michelin-starred tasting menu. But it will be no less high-minded, with an esoteric concept based on white-box galleries, “a place where anything is possible, limited only by its walls and the imagination of the artist,” according to a release.

More practically, that means an a la carte American dinner menu with Japanese touches. The focus is on seafood and vegetables, with dishes such as crispy nori tartlets with salmon tartare and spicy egg yolk; grilled maitake mushrooms with surf clams and daikon sprouts; and tile fish with edamame, pickled daikon radish, and cilantro. The food will be served in an 80-seat restaurant with a bar designed by Jason Volenec Studio, which was behind Miss Lily’s 7A and Bodegra Negra at the Dream Downtown.

It’s been more than three years since Hergatt has had a public restaurant in the city. He made a name for himself at SHO, his shuttered fine dining restaurant in the Financial District and then Juni, where he earned a Michelin star in Midtown East for a polished American tasting menu. But Juni closed in 2016, and since then Hergatt has been focused on his residents-only restaurant in apartment tower 432 Park Avenue. He also spent this past summer overseeing the food at Montauk hot spot the Surf Lodge.

The Vestry opens this fall inside the hotel formerly known as the Trump Soho.