Union Squared

Cafe Zaffri (Union Square)

RESTAURANTS • First Person

Opened earlier this month a block off Union Square at the memorable address of 16 East 16th St., Cafe Zaffri has a fair bit to tell us about the state of New York City dining in 2025.

The vast space is a network of three large, interlocked rooms that run from the street entrance through a bar room for drop-ins, cocktails, and more casual bites, to the middle atrium that will serve as an all-day cafe once breakfast and lunch open (though already seating dinner guests), through to the back dining room. Not unlike La Tete D’Or, this dining room stretches on for an unexpectedly long distance before resolving at its far end in booths and another bar. The ceiling above glows through stained-glass panels.

The service, at this early stage in the restaurant’s life, lacks a point of view. Our server asked for our dinner order before our drinks order, and the pacing of the meal followed no discernible rhythm. So it goes, and certainly better than my recent meal at the newly reopened Gjelina where the servers’ point of view was to flip this table as fast as humanly possible.

The food, Middle Eastern in bent, is excellent, especially if you find yourself craving lamb. For starters, there’s lamb tartare, and for mains, the pièce de résistance is lamb wellington. Our four-top loved the bread service (with three kinds of bread and separate bowls for dipping labneh, olive oil, and eggplant), the dazzling chicken liver mousse (piped onto toast and topped with pistachios and figs), the shish barak (Lebanese-style meat dumplings), and, yes, that lamb wellington (as unabashed an entree as you’ll find anywhere in the city right now).

Consider, too, the skewer service. Among the handful of options, we chose steak and octopus. Both were delicious, though maybe not quite enough for a main course. (Indeed, portions throughout the menu are modest, bringing to mind a recent observation from a FOUND confab: the Ozempic era of New York City restaurants’ portioning is fully upon us.)

Naturally, all of this takes place inside a new private club, this one a London import called The Twenty Two. In addition to the ground-floor Cafe Zaffri (which is open to the public), there’s a members club with its own living spaces and private dining room on the 9th floor, plus a 77-room hotel. (Club pricing: $2000/year and up, with a $750 initiation fee.)

If the food at Cafe Zaffri feels especially polished for a new opening, credit the team behind Raf’s, which is behind Zaffri and has nicknamed it (as reads the menu cover) Zaf’s. If Raf’s is a place that feels clubby by dint of its small dining room and close quarters with the kitchen, Zaf’s aims for clubbiness at scale. Whether it takes hold will reveal even more about what kind of dining experiences we can expect in 2025 and beyond. –Lockhart Steele

→ Cafe Zaffri (Union Square) • 16 E 16th St • Tue-Sat 5p-12a • Reserve.