In 2018, the sommelier Grant Reynolds launched Parcelle as a new kind of wine seller, like the retail version of a wine list that eventually offered monthly subscription “drops.” When, in 2022, he opened a wine bar on Division Street, it involved a bit of vertical integration: Customers are sent post-dinner dossiers on wines they drank and recommendations for a few suggested bottles, as well. The team includes Christine Collado, whose job involves turning diners onto the retail business; and Allison Cordes, a buyer who figures out which bottles are right for retail, the wine bar, or both.
Now Parcelle is expanding again, to the MacDougal Street space that was most recently home to Babs. The wine selection at the new restaurant will look similar to Chinatown — where the list is 520 bottles deep and runs the gamut from $75 of white burgundy to a $5,535 Pétrus from 1989 — but Parcelle Part Two will also be more of a restaurant proper, both in its design (less loungey, only one love-seat couch) and its menu ambition. To that end, the group has brought in more talent: former Porcelain chef Kate Telfeyan as the group’s culinary director and Mark Ladner as consulting executive chef.
The last time we saw Ladner in New York, it was 2017 and he’d left Del Posto to jump into the fast-casual gold rush with a chain in the making called Pasta Flyer. This is the chef who had helped kick off this city’s long entanglement with cacio e pepe at Lupa and the culinary technician who gave us 100-layer lasagna at Del Posto, but Pasta Flyer was not meant to be, and, for a while, it looked as though Ladner’s time in this city was done after he moved home to Boston to open a restaurant. A few months ago, however, he returned to Manhattan.
Telfeyan and Ladner, along with executive sous-chef Robert Kent, have been retooling the original location’s menu — adding a chunky Caesar dip with thick slices of radishes served over ice like oysters — and creating dishes for the new spot, which is more firmly a restaurant. Some ideas floating around are roasted-garlic rigatoni; crab with hearts of palm and hollandaise; and duck confit alongside roasted grapes. The development process has been as much about creating dishes as a unified POV for the many cooks now in Parcelle’s kitchens. “The three of us are trying to develop this language, having never worked together before and having completely different backgrounds,” Ladner says. “It’s interesting.”
They are happy to throw out possible descriptions for their varied style: Neo-Euro? Postmodern-Euro? What about southeastern-southwestern European-style cuisine? “There’s definitely certain flavors and ingredients that aren’t traditional to Western Europe,” Reynolds says, pointing to a tuna tartare with chile oil and crispy shallots. “We’re not coming out saying we’re a ‘European’ restaurant.”
The space will nevertheless have a continental look, though it won’t resemble Babs. Contractors had opened up the space, taking out the old restaurant’s curving golden bar. Some of Parcelle’s cabinets and shelves are custom-made by Matt Hogan, a furniture designer out of Germantown, while everything else is mid-century vintage from France, Italy, and Scandinavia. Through the chairs, Reynolds explained his design approach. “It is definitely not an original Gio Ponti. They’re old knockoffs, that’s sort of our shtick,” he says. “I don’t want to have a $2,000 chair, but I want to have something that has a little personality to it.”
