New West Village Restaurant Named 'Hottest' According To New List

WEST VILLAGE, NY — A West Village restaurant was named one of the "hottest" new eateries in the city for the month of June, according to a new list.

Libertine, a new-wave French bistro at 684 Greenwich St., near Christopher Street, made the list published Monday by Eater NY.

The spot is led by a group with eclectic backgrounds, with Chef Max Mackinnon who got a James Beard nomination for his work at Pistou in Burlington, VT, and accolades for new-nordic spot Relae in Copenhagen, D.C., notes Eater NY. General manager Cody Pruitt comes from natural wine bar, Anfora, on Eighth Avenue.

“We’re serving French food in a way that we like eating in France that isn’t really available here,” Pruitt told Resy in a recent interview.

Libertine opened in late May in a location that has been a restaurant since the 1870s, first as a longshoreman's club, Pruitt said in the interview, adding that it was then a cafeteria, a speakeasy, a gay bar, a center of the Black power movement and, most recently, Gaetana's, a beloved Italian restaurant.

The starting menu features hor d’oeuvres like broiled scallops with seaweed butter and leeks, and a lobster and fish mousse-stuffed cabbage, plus main dishes like a house-made pork sausage, chicken with wild mushrooms and vin jaune and a monkfish with a Calvados and cream sauce, reports Resy.