NYC chef’s spot due soon on Hudson’s Warren Street

John Delucie, a chef and restaurateur who built and rebuilt a top New York City culinary career over nearly 20 years that included the likes of The Waverly Inn and King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel, is on the verge of opening a farm-to-table restaurant called social Merchants Social in Hudson. Delucie has described it as being focused on Hudson Valley ingredients with an approach grounded in the simplicity of Italian home cooking but not married to any one cuisine.

Merchant Social is located at 333-335 Warren St., an 1850s-era building that was long home to Ca’ Mea restaurant before the latter moved down the street. The inside space is divided into a casual bar/ lounge area and a separate dining room facing an open kitchen; the rear courtyard seats more than 70.

Last weekend’s projected opening was delayed by the lack of a necessary permit, according to post on social media by the restaurant.

Service days are said to be Tuesday

to Saturday for dinner and brunch on weekends, but hours have not been posted.

Running the kitchen for Delucie on a daily basis is Kevin Rubis, previously of the Kingston restaurant Hutton Brickyards, according to Chronogram. A preliminary menu included salt-cod pierogies, lamb tartare, egg noodles with corned beef tongue and cabbage, and cilantro cavatelli with eggplant and fermented black beans. Prices have no been posted.

Delucie grew to fame starting in 2005 by co-founding, with thenvanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, the ultra-trendy Waverly Inn in the West Village of Manhattan. By 2014 Delucie was running five restaurants that grossed $40 million annually, but a collapse soon began, according to press reports.

Delucie currently owns a 10,000-square-foot Italian restaurant in Brooklyn called Ainslie and the relaunched iconic Empire Diner, located on 10th Avenue in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood near The High Line. He also owns Lumaca, the flagship restaurant at the HGU New York hotel, but it has been listed as closed temporarily since early in the pandemic.