Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery

Andrew Carmellini’s French restaurant, grand café, and bakery offers a contemporary take on the classic brasserie. Like some of the city’s other trendy brasseries, Andrew Carmellini’s version offers plates of fresh oysters, newfangled versions of duck au poivre, and twirls of skinny golden frites in soft paper cones. Unlike the others, there’s also a Balthazar-like boulangerie up front, where you can purchase fresh-baked croissants and pointy baguettes and ogle trays of overpriced pastries displayed under glass. The tall, airy room on Lafayette Street features Continental-style picture windows and spacious coffee-colored banquets, and it’s easily the prettiest, most workable space that Carmellini and his team have occupied since they began hatching restaurant ideas over a decade ago.