Frenchette
Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson rewrite every section of this menu day to day, wines by the glass included, so the escargots you came for might arrive over creamy scrambled eggs or not at all.1
Why go
The two of them helped open Balthazar and Minetta Tavern for Keith McNally before this was their own room, and the James Beard Foundation made it Best New Restaurant in 2019.4 Jake Cohen reviewed it in its opening month for Time Out and put the ambition plainly: They're not trying to reinvent the French wheel but drive home classics in a more refined (and pricier) manner than your average bistro.
6 A wedge of Spanish tortilla arrives airy, with trout roe for a briny pop. Duck breast comes rendered against a pile of fries. Beignets come stuffed with smoked eel, and the duck is always on and never the same: Kenny Yang has eaten it three ways here.1
In 2024 the pair took on Le Veau d'Or on the Upper East Side, one of the city's oldest French bistros, twelve years after first asking the previous owner about it.2 Beard named Hanson and Nasr Outstanding Restaurateurs in 2025 for that room, this one and Le Rock together.5
Order this / avoid
- Order: something off the Amuse list first. Kenny Yang's advice in The Infatuation is to start every meal there, and the cod cheeks and the razor clams are what he picked out.1
- Order: the mille-feuille. Cohen calls it
the best version I've had outside of Paris.
6 - Avoid: arriving set on one dish. Ask what changed today.
What locals & experts say
- Yang rated it 8.3 on 26 January 2022, and on the kitchen's aim:
This place seems to have one goal, and it's to make your eyes roll back into your head because you haven't tasted anything so rich and decadent in a very long time.
1 - The same review, on the room:
With its worn wood floors and dimly-lit atmosphere, Frenchette feels warm and familiar,
and at peak hours itcan get frenetic and loud, but in a way that makes you remember why you live in this city.
1 - Jake Cohen, Time Out New York, 16 May 2018, rated 4 of 5: he marks the ceiling as well as the floor.
So, while you won't have any gustatory revelations, you will have a relatively flawless experience.
6 - Matthew Schneier, Grub Street (10 December 2025): writing about Le Veau d'Or, he counts this room among Hanson and Nasr's hits, alongside Le Rock and Wild Cherry.7
Good to know
- Walking in: Yang says the bar area is often easy to get a seat in on the night, and that a dining-room table for an occasion wants booking a few weeks out.1
Verdict
should-visit — The James Beard Foundation made this Best New Restaurant in 2019 and made Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson Outstanding Restaurateurs in 2025. If the duck frites is on the night you go, order it: seared to medium rare, crackly skin over a thick layer of fat, bearnaise alongside. Get a baguette for the table as well, because the sauces here need one. I have not found a review of the cooking later than January 2022.