Vibe check

Cafe Commerce (Upper East Side)

RESTAURANTS • First Person

One cornerstone of FOUND’s restaurant coverage is that we care as much, and sometimes more, about the experience as the food. What’s the space like? How’s the vibe? How does this restaurant make you feel?

And it was atmosphere I was considering last week, sitting with a friend at the reborn Cafe Commerce, which opened in January mid-block on Lexington Ave. on the Upper East Side.

Initially, I was unimpressed. The place felt small, too constrained. At the front of the restaurant is a loose assortment of tables where a picture window looks out to the street, with four- and two-person booths running down one side of the space and a bar down the other. Mirrored panels run the length of the wall. At the back of the restaurant, a few more booths, and then, quite suddenly, the kitchen. When we arrived on the early side last Thursday, the vibes were low-key — maybe even off-key.

But as the (really hot, and really good) basket of breads hit our table, the room started to fill up, and the music — an ’80s soundtrack — turned up. Soon, the bar was packed, and the tables followed, with a crowd ranging in age from 25 to 80. Cafe Commerce started to feel like the restaurant I remembered.

When it operated in the West Village from 2008 to 2015, this restaurant was known simply as Commerce. It occupied that iconic corner turn of the eponymous street where Rita Sodi and Jodi Williams now operate The Commerce Inn. In that time, a night at Commerce always felt like an event. “Joint jammed, hopping,” reads my note from one visit I paid in 2012.

Chef Harold Moore — who was there then, too — has made the transfer uptown, bringing his wide-ranging culinary inspiration to a menu that scans French. On our table this night: 20-herb salad with manchego, and a Moore classic, sweet potato tortelloni with hazelnuts, both satisfying starters. Moore has always had a steady hand with meat, and chicken schnitzel topped with cucumber salad demonstrated that he still does. (Two meat dishes for two — a 14oz New York strip, and roasted chicken with foie gras bread stuffing — read like they’d be apt examples of his handiwork as well.)

When Moore passed by our table, I asked him what he thought was the difference between his new uptown digs versus downtown. “Up here, people still order an appetizer and an entree,” he laughed. Dessert, too, in our case: Both the birthday cake and another favorite holdover from the West Village era, the coconut cake, arrived towering over our table.

By then, the volume in the restaurant had risen to a crescendo, the din of the crowd signaling its approval of this new, old restaurant. As our last plates were cleared, my friend remarked: “It’s 7pm, but it feels like 11.” Indeed it did — and uptown, no less. How did Cafe Commerce make us feel? Very, very good. –Lockhart Steele

→ Cafe Commerce (Upper East Side) • 964 Lexington Ave • Tue-Fri 1145a-10p, Sat-Sun 5-10p • Reserve.