Little Prince

French technique at the SoHo pass

Matt Conroy works the pass as chef at Little Prince in SoHo, New York City, with French technique behind a bistro menu that keeps its pleasures close to the hand. Matt Conroy came through Little Prince as executive chef after posts as sous chef at Verde in Stratton Mountain, Vermont, and cook at Craigie on Main in Boston, Massachusetts. That path matters here because Little Prince asks for the discipline of a room that reads as easy from the table: steak tartare cut and seasoned for immediacy, skate Grenobloise held in the bright register of butter, caper, lemon, and fish, and a burger built from the grammar of soupe à l’oignon rather than from excess. Conroy’s later kitchens show how far he has carried that appetite for structure. At Oxomoco in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, he served as Head Chef in 2018, then moved into Washington, D.C. kitchens where heat, masa, fruit, and meat became central to his work. Little Prince sits earlier in that line, but not apart from it. The common thread is authorship through assembly, with the plate finished by timing as much as by recipe.

The burger treated like onion soup

The off-menu French Onion Soup Burger gives the kitchen its clearest signature. Caramelized onions, Emmenthal cheese, and béchamel do not simply dress the beef; they pull a bistro staple into another form, keeping the sweetness, dairy, and browned depth of the soup while changing the vessel. That decision suits a place built on classic French bistro cooking without making the room feel fixed in amber. Steak tartare holds to the colder side of the bench, where knife work, seasoning, and texture have to land before the plate leaves the station. Skate Grenobloise asks for a different discipline: fish cooked gently enough to stay intact, then sharpened by the sauce rather than hidden under it. The wine program is curated, and the glass has a role beside the food, not a separate performance. Little Prince does not need a long manifesto for its method. The work is in the conversions: soup into burger, bistro habit into nightly service, familiar dishes held close enough to their origins that the hand remains visible.

Sunlight, flowers, and the counter’s pull

The room gives the cooking a particular frame. Floor-to-ceiling windows bring daylight across a compact SoHo dining room, and dramatic floral arrangements soften the harder edges of service without quieting the place into ceremony. A pink disco ball sits inside that mix, playful but not careless, a small signal that the bistro can take technique seriously without making solemnity part of the bill. The atmosphere stays cozy and intimate, with conversation carrying at the tables rather than swallowing the counter. In that kind of room, the pass has to read cleanly. Plates cannot depend on distance or theater. The French Onion Soup Burger arrives with its caramelized onions, Emmenthal, and béchamel doing the speaking for Little Prince.