Cafe Cluny

Steak frites at the pass

At the pass, Andy Xu, Executive Chef at Cafe Cluny in New York City, works in the register that steak frites demands: heat, timing, and no room for drift. Since 2019, Xu has overseen the kitchens of The Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Cafe Cluny, three New York dining rooms with their own tempo and habits. At Cafe Cluny, the dish attached to his work is steak frites, a bistro plate that gives the kitchen few places to hide. The meat must leave the fire at the right moment; the fries must arrive hot; the sauce cannot carry what the station has missed. Xu’s earlier progression explains the discipline. He began as a Line Cook at Oceana from 2000 to 2003, moved into the Chef De Partie seat at CRU from 2003 to 2007, then became Sous Chef at the Royalton Hotel from 2007 to 2008. Later roles at Bouley, Patina Group, Ciano, Union Square Hospitality Group, The Red Cat, BR Guest Hospitality, and DaDong NY built the same ladder from repetition to coordination. Cafe Cluny asks him to hold that discipline inside a neighborhood bistro, where regularity matters as much as invention.

A bistro program across the day

The kitchen at Cafe Cluny runs French bistro structure through a modern New York day. Breakfast and brunch lean on eggs, pancakes, French toast, oatmeal, granola, and the French omelette, while lunch and dinner move toward sandwiches, salads, steak tartare, frisée salad aux lardons, steak frites au poivre, the Cluny Burger, the Tuna Burger, and the Lobster Roll. The menu rotates seasonally, but the method stays close to the bistro grammar: a station needs a clean set, hot pans, cold mise, and cooks who understand when a plate is finished. The house also keeps a curated wine program beside the food rather than in front of it, which suits a room built for conversation. In Xu’s hands, the program reads less like a list of signatures than a set of recurring tests. A burger has to hold its structure. Tartare needs knife work and seasoning. Frisée aux lardons needs fat, acid, and timing to meet in the bowl before the leaves collapse.

The room on West 12th Street

The room at 284 West 12th Street carries its work softly: warm light, close tables, a counter rhythm, the low movement of servers reading a conversational floor. Cafe Cluny sits in the West Village, in a space that had an earlier life as Café New Amsterdam in the late 1970s before Keith McNally took it on and remade it under the Cluny name. In 2018, the restaurant expanded, adding a front seating area, a bespoke mural, and a private room, but the scale still reads as intimate rather than grand. That matters for the kitchen. Plates leave the pass into a room where the guest may be stopping for coffee, settling into brunch, or returning for the same bistro plate they ordered last time. The craft is not theatrical. It is the daily adjustment of pace to a room that wants polish without stiffness.

The long New York thread

Xu’s current station belongs to a longer McNally thread that also includes The Odeon and Cafe Luxembourg, places whose authority comes from endurance as much as design. Cafe Cluny’s task is narrower and harder than it looks: stay familiar without going slack. The close attention lands in the plates that repeat, especially steak frites, the Cluny Burger, and the Lobster Roll at Cafe Cluny.