A taste of the Champs-Élysées in Tribeca, Fouquet’s New York is a luxury boutique hotel by a family-owned French hospitality group. With chic interiors and gorgeous suites by Martin Brudnizki, it’s home to a tranquil spa and an outpost of Paris’s Brasserie Fouquet’s.
Location 9/10
A tony downtown enclave on the Hudson River, Tribeca is home to some of Manhattan’s most expensive real estate, blending industrial heritage and charming cobblestone streets with new build luxury condos. The former stomping grounds of JFK Jr. in the ’90s and home to the Tribeca Film Festival, the neighborhood has long had an effortlessly cool appeal. Fouquet’s is situated at the northern perimeter, near Soho, and in easy proximity to all the Tribeca standbys, from the Odeon to Bubby’s and the beautifully landscaped Hudson River Park offering picture perfect views of the Freedom Tower.
Design 9/10
The 97-room hotel is situated within a new build red brick building with enormous picture windows that seamlessly blends into the neighborhood’s architectural style. With interiors by Martin Brudnizki, the intimate lobby is outfitted in a pastiche of textures, from a plush area rug, to glossy, wood-paneled walls, and low-slung, velvety sofas and chairs. With a palette of blush, pistachio and canary, the space is crowned with Venetian-style chandeliers for a cosseting jewel box effect. A mirror-paneled bookcase slides open to reveal Bar Titsou, a sexy little speakeasy-style cocktail bar.
Amenities & Hospitality 8/10
The hotel’s tranquil Spa Diane Barrière is an intimate oasis with a relaxation pool featuring a range of bubbling functions, a steam room, sauna and daybeds luring blissed out nappers. Home to just five treatment rooms and a beautifully edited menu of massages, facials and body treatments making liberal use of Biologique Recherche products, it’s an unquestionably luxurious experience. On my visit, I enjoyed Fouquet’s Signature Massage, a customizable therapy including lymphatic drainage.
There’s also an outpost of local Dogpound gym and the stylish Cannes Cinema with a stadium arrangement of chic lounges for weekly movie nights and private events.
Overall, hospitality is warm, gracious and capable, although the Old World, Parisian gentility I so appreciate hasn’t exactly transferred overseas. It still feels very much like an American-run hotel.
“I met tons of poets in New York. There are none whatsoever in L.A. If anyone in L.A. said they were a poet, everyone would get mildly embarrassed and go look for someone else to talk to.”
Eve Babitz, “Eve’s Hollywood,” 1972
Rooms 9/10
Awash in shades of rose petal, lavender and pistachio, Brudnizki’s color palette was inspired by Ladurée macarons, and they do, indeed, feel like stepping inside a box of confections. Categorically spacious and sumptuously textured with lacquered credenzas, Venetian glass chandeliers and tufted headboards that run up to the ceiling, the aesthetic is a blend of classical and Art Deco, freshened up with modern pastel shades. Enormous picture windows invite the city in with neighboring brick walls casting a complimentary rosy hue onto the scene.
Bathrooms are luxurious in deeply veined Carrara marble, featuring playful “Toile de Jouy” wallpaper with illustrations of Lower Manhattan icons, from the Statue of Liberty to the Odeon, for a playful melding of Paris and New York sensibilities. Suites feature (my favorite) Toto toilets.
Food & Beverage 7/10
For a Parisian transplant with over a century’s legacy of upscale French brasserie cuisine, I was surprised by the uneven and somewhat lackluster offerings at Brasserie Fouquet’s, especially considering its eye-poppingly high prices; something luxury hotel restaurants so often get away with as a shrugging matter of course. While I enjoyed the cheese soufflé and my duck breast entree, there’s better French food to be had in New York City at a better value (recent meals at Lucien, Raoul’s, Le Crocodile, Nice Matin and Cafe Luxembourg come to mind…).
I’ve dined at the original on the Champs-Élysées and remember it being a thoroughly enjoyable experience in a very French, old school fashion with excellent service and good food in a grand setting. There’s no mistaking the New York restaurant for Paris—although the red leather banquettes and chairs gesture to the original. Instead, it’s a dazzling room, featuring many familiar Brudnizki motifs: cascading crystal deco chandeliers, high-gloss wood-paneled walls and tile floors evocative of terrazzo.
I would, however, gladly return for an aperitif or nightcap at Bar Titsou with its menu of earnestly creative cocktails and gustatory temptations, like caviar service. There’s also Élysées, a more casual all-day restaurant that serves breakfast, and a seasonal rooftop lounge with privileged Tribeca skyline views.
Value 8/10
Current rates from about $1,100. Book.
The Bottom Line
A luxurious Tribeca confection by way of Paris with gorgeous rooms, a sexy speakeasy, and languidly indulgent spa in an enviable corner of the city.
Contact
456 Greenwich Street; 917-965-2600; hotelsbarriere.com
