Le Coucou Fine Dining in SoHo: What to Order at Lunch

Le Coucou, at 138 Lafayette Street on the SoHo edge of Canal Street, serves lunch seven days a week starting at 11:30 am, and that midday seating is the least intimidating way into one of the city's grandest French dining rooms. Two courses at lunch cost $81, three cost $125, and the full A Very Coucou Lunch is $150. If you have been searching for fine dining near me in lower Manhattan and want white tablecloths without a four-hour commitment, this is the room to book first.

Daniel Rose grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, went to France for college at the American University of Paris, and stayed. He opened Spring in 2006 with 16 seats in the 9th arrondissement, later moved it near the Louvre, and in 2015 opened La Bourse et La Vie, a 29-seat bistro between the Bourse and the Palais Royal. Le Coucou, opened with restaurateur Stephen Starr in June 2016, was his first restaurant in the United States.

The New York debut landed quickly. Le Coucou won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant in 2017, and in 2018 it appeared at No. 85 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. Rose closed Spring in 2017 and made New York his home base, which is why the menu here reads like a personal archive of the Paris cooking that made his name rather than a hotel kitchen's idea of French food.

The restaurant sits at the base of the 11 Howard hotel, and the most memorable way in is the Howard Street entrance, framed by planters and a small neon sign. Roman and Williams designed the space, and their own project notes describe custom pewtered-steel chandeliers with hand-blown glass shades hanging from an exposed concrete ceiling. That contrast, raw concrete above and candlelit linen below, is the whole mood of the room.

At lunch the light pours in and the room reads as a long, bright brasserie. Expect a mix of fashion-office regulars on expense accounts, couples marking an anniversary with the tasting menu, and solo diners at the bar treating themselves to quenelle and a glass of white Burgundy. Service is formal in the old French sense, with plates presented and explained, but nobody blinks if you order two courses and leave by 1:30.

The lunch prix fixe draws from the same kitchen as dinner. Starters include poireaux vinaigrette with hazelnuts, yellowfin tuna with espelette oil, and a mussel bisque with saffron called Soupe Billy By. The quenelle de brochet, a pike mousse in lobster sauce, is on the lunch fish list too, so the restaurant's signature is available at the $81 price point.

Some lunch choices carry supplements, and the menu prints them plainly. The hand-chopped beef tartare with caviar adds $68, the lobster and avocado starter adds $19, the Maine lobster with green peppercorns and pommes dauphine adds $29, and the filet with Sarawak green peppercorn sauce adds $25. If you want the sweetbread vol-au-vent or the grilled quail with foie gras and fresh fig, both sit in the main course list with no surcharge.

Dinner switches to an à la carte card with prices next to every dish. The quenelle de brochet with sauce américaine is $35 and is the one plate nearly every table orders. Ris de veau à l'estragon, veal sweetbreads with cream, tarragon and maitake mushrooms, is $49. Grilled foie gras with moscatel vinegar and sunchoke is also $49, and buckwheat-fried monkfish with curry vinaigrette is $26.

For mains, the Dover sole meunière Tradition, served with golden butter and spinach, is $92, and the Maine lobster bourse et la vie is $95, its name a nod to Rose's Paris bistro. Tout le lapin, all of the rabbit, is $69 and is the dish that best shows the kitchen's patience. Duckling with fig is $70, and the veal chop gratinéed with porcini and aged Comté is $90.

Our honest call: skip the $98 tartare unless caviar is the point of the night. It is a luxurious plate, but the quenelle at $35 and the rabbit at $69 tell you far more about why this kitchen matters. Save room for the île flottante with candied almonds and Grand Marnier at $21, or the baba au rhum with vanilla cream and fresh pineapple at $18.

A Very Coucou Dinner is $220 per person, before tax and gratuity. Wine accompaniment comes at two levels, $145 or $345, and a non-alcoholic pairing is $115. The menu notes that the kitchen can handle most dietary requirements, gluten intolerance included, so mention allergies when you book and again when you sit down.

For a first dinner, the à la carte route usually beats the tasting menu. Two people sharing the quenelle, the sweetbreads, the rabbit and one dessert land well under two tasting menus, and you choose every plate. The tasting menu makes more sense for a milestone dinner when you want the kitchen to set the pace and the sommelier to handle the bottle decisions.

Reservations run through Resy, and OpenTable lists the restaurant as not bookable, so do not wait for a slot there. Weekday lunch is the easiest table to land on short notice. For dinner, the 5 pm opening seat and the late tables after 9:30 on Friday and Saturday, when the kitchen serves until 11 pm, come up more often than prime 7:30 slots.

Bigger groups have their own rules. Parties of 7 to 10 must order a prix fixe, priced at $240 for four courses, and lunch is available for parties of 11 or more. Dinner for groups that large is only offered as a full buyout. A party of six sits just under that line, so it can still order from the regular menus, and that size is the sweet spot for sharing the whole dessert list.

Before lunch, duck into Cortlandt Alley to find Mmuseumm, a separate, tiny museum unrelated to the restaurant that fits into a former freight elevator shaft of about 36 square feet. The museum, not Le Coucou, opened in 2012, and its peephole windows let you look in at any hour, which makes it a quick, odd detour that suits a meal built on old-fashioned French technique.

After a long dinner, walk a few blocks east to Mulberry Street, where the Feast of San Gennaro has been held every September since 1926. On a regular night the street is quieter, and a lap past the old Little Italy storefronts is a gentle way to walk off the île flottante before heading for the Canal Street subway.

Address: Le Coucou, 138 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10013, with a second entrance on Howard Street through 11 Howard. Phone: (212) 271-4252. Lunch: Saturday through Thursday 11:30 am to 2:30 pm, Friday 11:30 am to 2 pm. Dinner: Sunday through Thursday 5 pm to 10 pm, Friday and Saturday 5 pm to 11 pm. Reservations on Resy.

Prices from the official menus: lunch $81 for two courses, $125 for three, $150 for A Very Coucou Lunch, and $220 for A Very Coucou Dinner, all before tax and tip. The Canal Street station sits about two minutes away on foot. Ask the Karpo APP for a pre-dinner wine bar nearby or a backup French table if Resy comes up empty.