An Elegy for Commerce, an Ode to the Commerce Inn
To drop into New York's The Commerce Inn mid-dog walk and sip a tavern coffee with whisky and maple in one of the wooden booths on the bar-side of the quirky restaurant on a Sunday morning is the best version of stopping by a neighbor’s just to say hi.
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When it was announced that Harold Moore's Commerce Restaurant would close in 2015, I was in my 20s and I felt keenly like another of my friends had revealed they were moving quietly from New York to Los Angeles. It was a decade of loneliness that was sometimes acute and sometimes diaphanous and pervasive, punctuated by going away parties for the women I lived with in various configurations of converted studios that were absolutely not up to code.
In between the somber parties, I developed intimate relationships with restaurants. I applied to new jobs while sitting at the bar at Joseph Leonard at 10 p.m. most nights, nursing an Aligoté and trying to make a burger last the 90 minutes of alone time I needed to string together some narrative of a new me—one who had unforetold skills, one who might be a “culture fit.” On chilly weekends, I jogged slowly to Chinatown and stopped into Deluxe Green Bo for the soup dumplings that knew what I needed before I did, letting the familiar screen at the back of the space that played a slideshow of customer-submitted selfies with scallion pancakes soothe me like I might a girlfriend’s puppy. And when I had something to celebrate, I would corral my boyfriend and any New York stragglers over to the standing room-only bar at Commerce. (There were stools, allegedly—we just never got within four Teddy Coat-clad backs of sloshed, beautiful strangers to see them for ourselves.)
Commerce was the only restaurant in the city with vibes so contagiously good that the recurring hour-long wait at the bar for the table you’d reserved weeks before actually managed to be a virtue. By the time you’d finished two Last Words, you were ravenous for the salad of many herbs and lettuces, for the perfect roast chicken, for that coconut cake with its lush yellow crumb and the crunch of the torched flakes spackled into its cream cheese jacket.
So in 2021, when Rita Sodi and Jody Williams took over the space, which exists in the dip of the u-shaped block between Barrow and Bedford, it was in some ways a comfort. The pair have marshaled some of my other closest restaurant friends over the years to fruition then to continued excellence: I Sodi, where I’d write in a journal while I ate aglio e olio, Via Carota, which has an unassailable anchovy-butter toast that makes the perfect dinner for one with a spritz. But it was only when the chefs opened The Commerce Inn for brunch this past summer that it began to feel like a true confidante. To drop in mid-dog walk and sip a tavern coffee with whisky and maple in one of the wooden booths on the bar-side of the quirky restaurant (you can see the stools now, by the way) on a Sunday morning is the best version of stopping by a neighbor’s just to say hi.
The off-menu currant scones, which come sandwiched around raspberry jam and clotted cream, and the brown bread-smoked fish platter would be worth a brunch visit alone even if the venue weren’t a close personal friend. There’s an epic pancake sandwich with bacon and eggs in the middle, chomped happily around the dining room by children and adults alike, and a chicory salad with bleu cheese enjoyed almost exclusively by the big kids. Order from the specials menu, especially when you see the potato pancakes, which are just as crisp as they should be, with the lacy edges seen at good home cooks’ Hanukkah parties but rarely spotted in restaurants. And if you see me there, wedged into a bar booth, trying to keep my poorly concealed shih tzu away from a lamb pasty, say hello—I could always use the company.
The Commerce Inn, 50 Commerce St, New York, NY 10014.
Family Style No. 5
It's Not Me, It's You
Spring 2025
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