Capitaine, the new restaurant and bar from the duo behind Cody Pruitt and Jacob Cohen, opens in the West Village at 684 Greenwich Street, at Christopher Street, today, June 19. The team behind Chateau Royale swapped their prior restaurant, Libertine,
with a seafood tavern, in a shift away from Libertine’s French bistro fare. The change tracks with Pruitt’s own eating habits.
“I’ve been surrounded by duck and butter for the better part of several years now,” Pruitt says. “For a guy with a foie gras tattoo, like, you’d think that I would never get tired of it.” But he says he noticed on his day off, he was eating mostly seafood and vegetables.
Capitaine’s retooling reflects his own shift; the menu draws on European seafood traditions and New York’s classic oyster bars. Executive chef Mike Gutterman, most recently sous chef at Kabawa, leads the kitchen. The raw bar features East Coast oysters, shrimp cocktail, chilled razor clams, and Jonah crab claws, available individually or as seafood plateaux. Traditional caviar service will be available, while the caviar sandwich, served on Japanese milk bread toast with caviar and sauce gribiche, nods to the iconic version once served at Grand Central Oyster Bar. They’ve also lined up starters like deviled eggs with sea urchin and whitefish brandade croquettes.
Larger dishes include a lobster roll, a wagyu burger, dorade, steak frites, and chicken katsu with spicy soubise. For groups, there’s a king crab feast and a surf-and-turf option built around a whole lobster and a 40-ounce côte de boeuf, both requiring advanced notice.
The wine list leans Old World, with more than 300 bottles, mostly French, with whites and sparkling wines as the backbone, he says. By-the-glass pours are $14 to $21. Cocktails are organized into four categories: Martinis, Negronis, Bubbles, and Shaken, including a Vesper riff with ambrato vermouth and cucumber, a lychee white negroni, and a pandan-infused Japanese highball. The brown-butter Old Fashioned, a holdover favorite from Libertine, makes the cut, too.
Cohen, a partner in B’Artusi, Via Porta, Chateau Royale, and Capitaine, will focus on operations and strategy.
The space has been reworked with new booths, banquettes, and a communal table, done up in sapele wood paneling, cognac-leather seating, and brass fixtures — mid-century in spirit, with a soundtrack that moves from ’90s R&B to indie rock over the course of the night.
Capitaine opens for dinner nightly, with brunch Saturday and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Weekday lunch arrives later this summer. Reservations are on Resy.
