12 Chairs is open sixteen hours a day and has been on MacDougal Street since 1995, which is long enough in SoHo terms to count as permanent. For anyone who needs somewhere to sit and work between a morning and an evening commitment, that combination is the whole proposition.
Sixteen hours, one table, no reason to move. That is a rare thing in SoHo.
The hours
Monday to Thursday, 8.00am to 11.00pm. Friday and Saturday, 8.00am to midnight. Sunday, 8.00am to 11.00pm. The address is 56 MacDougal Street; the phone is (212) 254-8640.
There is no break in service. That is the detail that makes this useful for a working day — you can arrive for breakfast at eight, stay through a quiet afternoon, and still be there when dinner service is running.
Most cafés that open at eight close in the afternoon, and most restaurants that serve until midnight do not open until later. Doing both is unusual.
The food
The menu combines Israeli, Russian and American flavours, which sounds like an unfocused mix and works because the Israeli half is the anchor. The hummus is the standout and the small plates are the format the kitchen is built around.
Israeli hummus is a distinct thing from the supermarket version: warmer, looser, more tahini-forward, served in a shallow bowl with a well in the middle for oil and toppings, and eaten with bread rather than with vegetables. Judge it on texture — it should be smooth rather than grainy — and on how much tahini is doing the work.
The Russian influence shows up in a handful of dishes that are worth ordering precisely because they do not belong on a Mediterranean menu. That is the character of the place rather than a flaw in it.
Why it works as a study room
A room with sixteen-hour service, a menu that spans breakfast to dinner, and a café rather than restaurant register is close to the ideal setup for a long working day. You are never eating at the wrong time and you are never the only person sitting.
The important courtesy at a place like this is to keep ordering. A table held for five hours on one coffee is a real cost to a small room, and the way to hold a table honestly is to order something roughly every ninety minutes — which the menu structure makes easy, since it moves from coffee to hummus to a full plate as the day goes on.
Avoid the obvious peaks if you want space: the lunch hour and the early evening are when the room is working hardest. Mid-afternoon is yours.
The size, and what changed
The name comes from the twelve chairs the place started with. It has since added many more seats, but the space remains quaint and cosy rather than large — the expansion did not turn it into a different kind of room.
That is worth setting expectations around. This is not a spacious café with room to spread out; it is a small room that has been carefully filled. A laptop and a coffee is fine, a laptop and a full spread of small plates is optimistic.
For a group above four, book. Resy carries reservations for the SoHo location.
SoHo around it
MacDougal Street at the SoHo end is quieter than the Village stretch a few blocks north, and the surrounding blocks — Sullivan, Thompson, Prince — are among the more pleasant walking streets in lower Manhattan.
Washington Square Park is about five minutes north and free. For a study day, the pattern of two hours at a table and twenty minutes walking a loop through the park is a better use of the day than four hours in one chair.
Spring Street and Houston Street stations are both walkable, which makes an evening finish straightforward.
Working from a café without being a problem
A room with sixteen-hour service invites long stays, and there is a reasonable etiquette to it that keeps cafés willing to tolerate laptops at all.
The main rule is spend proportional to time. Roughly one order every ninety minutes is the working convention — a coffee, then food, then another coffee. A table held for four hours on a single espresso is a genuine cost to a small room.
The second rule is table size. Taking a four-top alone at one in the afternoon is different from taking it at three, and moving to a two-top when one becomes free is a small courtesy that gets noticed.
The third is peaks. Lunch and early evening are when the room needs its seats, and that is the time to either be eating a full meal or to be somewhere else. Mid-afternoon is when a laptop is entirely welcome.
Practical notes
12 Chairs Cafe, 56 MacDougal Street, SoHo, New York. Phone (212) 254-8640; reservations via Resy. Monday–Thursday and Sunday 8.00am–11.00pm; Friday–Saturday 8.00am–midnight. No break in service. Israeli restaurant open since 1995, combining Israeli, Russian and American flavours; hummus and small plates are the strength. Small, cosy room — expanded well beyond the original twelve chairs but still not spacious. Re-order roughly every ninety minutes if holding a table for a long session. Quietest mid-afternoon. Washington Square Park is a five-minute walk. Hours change — confirm at 12chairscafe.com.
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Want to know whether there is a table free for a long afternoon right now? Ask Karpo for 12 Chairs' current hours and how busy the SoHo room is, plus a nearby backup with power and space if it is already full.
