Inside Or’esh, a New Mediterranean Restaurant in New York City

Get ready to meet Nadav 2.0.

Michelin-starred chef Nadav Greenberg is all too familiar with Levantine cuisine, but his latest endeavor brings about an entirely new interpretation of what dishes from the region look like. Greenberg, who formerly steered the ship at Shmoné, is taking the helm at Or’esh, a new concept from the folks at Catch Hospitality Group (CHG) in New York City.

“We are stretching ourselves when it comes to the culinary side of what we do. We’re taking risks, moving things differently, and we’re being unapologetic about it,” Eugene Remm, a founder of CHG, says. “I think Nadav is an artist, no different than a musician, no different than someone who’s creating a canvas or painting something.”

Just like any virtuoso, Greenberg needs a stage. The chef has certainly found that in Or’esh, which is opening its doors in SoHo today—and Robb Report is giving you an exclusive look inside.

The Rockwell Group dreamed the interiors at the 80-seat restaurant, the team at CHG wanted to create a luxe, maximalist interior that reflects what a luxury hot spot in SoHo should be in the year 2026. That means warm red hues, echoing the flicker of flames, glittering chandeliers, and touches of earthy browns abound for a moody blend of texture and light. The bar, too, continues that theme of red leather on its seating along the elongated countertop. You won’t find any obvious Mediterranean nods in the interiors, either, and that’s on purpose—the team lets the cuisine do the talking.

“We think it’s okay to separate menu from design, and we’re good with that,” Remm says.

The beating heart of space is the custom charcoal grille, which took six months to build just for the new locale. (The name of the restaurant, after all, translates to “light” and “fire”). Around the size of a bathtub, the grille touches 70 percent of the menu, an idea that Greenberg has been familiar with since childhood.

“It’s an art to cook on this charcoal,” the Moroccan Israeli chef says. “It’s hard to cook on this grill because you cannot program it. It’s not even heat; it’s changing all the time. We need to dance around it. We need to feel it.” Greenberg puts everything from cheese to tomatoes in contact with the fire; he even sizzles one side of a crude salmon, while the other sits on ice. Cooking in this way, pulling different sweet, sour, and, of course, smokey flavors out of ingredients, he explains, makes him and his team all the better.

That talent is shown off in the menu, which is focused on simplicity and ingredient-driven creations—and, of course, the kiss of that live fire, which allows those flavors to pop. Offerings include everything from handcrafted Jerusalem bagels to a dry-aged Hamachi to a spicy spinach gomiti. Even the housemade pasta is finished over the grille. “We’re working on a dessert that will touch the grille, so you’ll have that journey from the beginning until the end,” Greenberg says. Specialty tipples, meanwhile, are derived from one key ingredient, mirroring that simplicity ethos in the restaurant’s dishes.

You can also expect the classic Catch flair here, with where vibes are curated like at the company’s other hot spots, the celeb-favorite Corner Store and the Eighty Six. The reason that Or’esh came to life, too, Remm says, is all thanks to Greenberg; after the founder got a chance to meet the chef, it all became all too clear that CHG wanted to be a part of his next venture. The goal was to show off dishes from the Mediterranean in a modern, elevated setting.

“It’s taken us a year of working together and tasting and re-tasting,” Remm says. “So this isn’t a copy paste, plug and play. This is an entire new concept. We want to reinvent the category; we want to be the leaders of what modern Mediterranean cuisine is going to look like.”

To check out the fire-filled fun for yourself, head to 450 West Broadway.