Meet your heroes

Heroes & Pearl Box (Soho)

RESTAURANTS & BARS • First Person

Among the crop of new restaurants gracing New York City this fall, perhaps what’s made me happiest are the number of spots that have come out of the gate fully themselves, doing something different on arrival — and doing it extremely well. 

On West Broadway in Soho just below Broome, two new establishments tucked into the same townhouse recently joined this select group. I knew right away when we walked into the ground-floor restaurant Heroes that we were in for a novel experience. The decor is replete with lavenders and blacks, starting with the curved bar up front that gives way to a dining room ringed with banquettes in the back. Throughout, tall open racks display hundreds of wine bottles all tagged around their necks, a modernist wine cellar. This is a sexy date-night spot for post-daylight savings evenings. 

Then come the drinks and food menus, each playful in fonts and colors without being on the wrong side of it. We started with a glass of Aurélien Laherte blanc de blanc ($40 per), a choice recommended to us by proprietor Ariel Arce, and well worth it. Arce teamed with Roman restaurant Roscioli on its Manhattan debut last year, and is an expert on bubbles dating to her first NYC spot, Air’s Champagne Parlor. Cocktails with names like Celery and Apple feel right out of the fields at Stone Barns. We loved the Chef’s Garden, a gin cocktail with pickled cherry bomb peppers, and the Corn, pairing bourbon and sherry with, spectacularly, charred corn.

The food menu is also fun, and even more ambitious. Our first plate out, a lacquered brioche with black garlic butter (described on the menu as merely “bread and butter”) offered serious wow factor, as did the scallops that followed. Served individually in a buttery bacon dashi, they’re worth the trip alone. Finally, a beguiling peekytoe crab crêpe, an airy dish with a subtle curry note, rounded out our excellent starters.

The mains at Heroes are designed for two people to share. When chef Aaron Lirette emerged from the kitchen to bring us the 12-day dry-aged turbot with African spice mix that he’d just grilled for us over charcoal, his enthusiasm was contagious: “I cut into it to debone it, and it just exploded!” The result is a nearly perfect dish, one where the aging really comes through, a star of stars among NYC’s year of dry-aged fish (see also Il Totano, Massara, and Theodora, to name three).

Following a decadent dessert of chocolate ganache with whipped cream and pistachios, we headed upstairs. After passing through the cool-looking private dining room on the second floor — holiday party bookers, take note — we found our way to the top floor cocktail bar, Pearl Box (above). Here, Arce unabashedly set out to create 1970s-Playboy Club vibes. Surveying the room’s red glow from our two-top by the bar, it’s hard not to believe she succeeded. A final round of cocktails closed out our night, though if you’re coming in for more than a nightcap, there’s a separate small plates menu here, too, not to mention a roving caviar cart.

Pearl Box and Heroes operate as separate establishments, with separate reservation books. They’re great paired together, but also very much their own spots, as they begin to tell their own distinct New York City stories. –Lockhart Steele

→ Heroes (Soho) • 357 W Broadway • Mon-Sat 5-1030p • Reserve.
→ Pearl Box (Soho) • 357 W Broadway • Reserve (or both, via reservations@heroesrestaurantnyc.com)