Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1545488
35 Laura Young and Rigatoni transformation of the space. "We've always thought of the building as an American beauty," Robin says. For Roman and Williams, the project went way beyond just decoration. Marcel is designed, owned, and operated by the couple, in partnership with Sotheby's, which moved into the Breuer Building — the former Whitney Museum of American Art — last fall, after an extensive renovation by Herzog & de Meuron. The project is the designers' second restaurant; their first, the French eatery La Mercerie, adjoins their SoHo design emporium RW Guild. For Marcel, they teamed up once again with their downtown chef and partner Marie- Aude Rose on a French continental menu that feels like a throwback to a moment when Manhattan see-and-be-seen society was besotted with haute cuisine temples La Grenouille and La Côte Basque. Today, those frog's legs, Burgundy snails, côte de boeuf, and confit duck legs are served on candlelit tables set with flatware and glassware that not only reflect the designers' great taste but are also available for purchase. Meanwhile, the soaring cement walls now display art from Sotheby's rotating inventory of blue-chip works by such artists as Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, Elizabeth Peyton, and John Chamberlain. Diners order drinks with names like The Brutal Martini and can not only take home the cocktail glass — a bespoke hand-cut beauty with a pinstripe motif by Osaka-based artisan Kimiko Yasuda — but also bid on the massive blue, black, and green Ellsworth Kelly hanging in the stairwell. For the designers, Marcel is what Robin calls a petri dish of their philosophy of mixing culture, cuisine, and commerce The Alesches discovered a term that Breuer used to describe his work: heavy lightness. It's a concept that resonated, a contradictory feeling — the muscularity of concrete and steel mixed with the sensuousness of wood and brass. N ew York City's latest impossible reservation — the Roman and Wi l l i a m s - d e s i g n e d Marcel in Sotheby's n e w M a n h a t t a n headquarters — takes the cake. Specifically, a vanilla mousse- and-praline confection shaped like the restaurant's setting: the 1966 Breuer Building, a modernist masterpiece whose iconic trapezoidal windows are echoed here in layers of chocolate and almond croustillant. In the hands of Robin and Stephen Alesch, the married designers behind Roman and Williams, brutalism has never looked quite so inviting — or delicious. The couple, who created movie sets before founding one of America's most influential interior design studios, are masters of theatricality. Here, the drama begins as soon as you descend the original staircase created by the architect Marcel Breuer, namesake of both the Madison Avenue building itself and now, the restaurant on its lower level. The railing in walnut and bronze, suspended on a 30-foot drop of bush-hammered concrete, established the language for the designers' respectful