Casa Mono
Casa Mono takes in whole animals and butchers them at 52 Irving Place, and the MICHELIN inspector's must-order off the back of that is scrambled eggs with uni. The other one is confit goat. The guide carries the room at one Star.
Why go
The cooking starts on the Costa Brava and reaches well past it, and the inspector calls the tapas especially refined.1 The room is small.
Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich opened it in 2003 and Andy Nusser has been the chef and an owner since, which is why the piquillo peppers stuffed with braised oxtail have been on the card the whole time.3 He was still running the kitchen at the 2025 selection, and the card is still a la carte.6 Pete Wells rates it among the earliest and most influential rooms to twist the Spanish tapas idiom into what New Yorkers learned to call small-plates dining. The mosaic floor is worn down to something that looks like a Roman ruin.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the scrambled eggs with uni, and the confit goat beside it. Pete Wells describes the eggs stirred with chopped walnuts and lime zest and splashed with colatura, which the menu calls ancient anchovy oil.3
- Order: the seared skirt steak with stewed onions and almond romesco if you want one plate to be dinner.
- Order: the bone marrow. Robert Sietsema found it split open under trout roe, aioli, purple onion, horseradish and everything-bagel spice, spread over browned toast.5
- Avoid: ending up next door. Bar Jamon is the sister room on Irving Place at 17th Street, under the same owners, and it is a different menu.
What locals & experts say
- MICHELIN Guide New York, one Star on the guide's 2025 New York roster7, and the inspector on the butchery:
There's something reassuring about a kitchen that gets in whole beasts and does its own butchery.
1 - The same inspector, on the whole meal: he calls it food to cure what ails you.1
- Pete Wells reviewed it for the New York Times in September 2015 and gave it three stars, up from the two Marian Burros gave it in 2004, and his argument is that the room got better as it aged.3
- Ligaya Mishan put it 40th on her hundred best restaurants in the city in May 2026:
let this paragon of tapas bars free your mind, or at least remind you of the pleasures of this kind of dining.
4 - Robert Sietsema, then Eater NY's senior critic, on the list: an
insanely extensive and excellent Spanish wine list.
5
Good to know
- Booking: essential for a starred room this size, just east of Union Square.
- Groups: Bar Jamon next door takes up to 30 standing, or runs a wine class, if the table is bigger than this room can seat.2
- One premises: the city's register files both rooms under a single permit at 52 Irving Place, last inspected in February 2026.
Verdict
must-visit — You should surrender the ordering here. Somebody in that kitchen has already decided what arrives when, and the pleasure of the place is letting them get on with it. Book ahead and go as two. At $$$ on the guide, that is a fair trade for offal and whole-animal work in this city.