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On a recent Tuesday at Saleya, the newly opened Mediterranean restaurant in TriBeCa, Michel Cohen is holding court at a corner table, hipster cool in thick-rimmed glasses, brown leather jacket and ethically sourced sneakers. While he sips a glass of red wine, customers periodically approach his table to pay homage.
The 53-year-old owner looks every inch the part of the worldly, slightly edgy French restaurateur — except that he’s best known as a pediatrician. And he’s already got a solid fan base of ladies who lunch; many of whom have been bringing their kids to him since birth.
Today, the ladies are fashionably dressed and coiffed, if a little frazzled, as school pickup time approaches. One after the other, they congratulate the physician on his latest venture — an unusual one for a professional who made his fortune examining babies and writing a best-selling book “The New Basics,” urging Manhattan’s helicopter parents to loosen up.
“It doesn’t seem the most obvious next step for him [to enter the food industry], but Dr. Cohen is very neighborhood-oriented,” says TriBeCa-based publishing executive Linda Secondari-Black, 48, whose son, Luca, 11, and daughter, Stella, 9, have been patients since they were born. “His personality can fill a room — and it’s great that he’s added to our options for eating out.”
Cohen was already a bit of a rock star among New York’s yummy- mummy set, who flock to the Warren Street flagship of his hugely successful Tribeca Pediatrics. Then there was the publication last year of the popular, controversial book “Bringing Up Bébé” by Pamela Druckerman, which presented the ways in which the French excel at parenting. Cohen has a cameo in the book, discussing his philosophy on sleep training babies. (Let babies cry it out, he says, and they’ll learn good sleep habits from 2 months and up.)
Now, the eatery is surely adding to his mystique. Named after Cours Saleya, a plaza and market in his hometown of Nice, on the French Riviera, it is located on West Broadway, just around the corner from his Warren Street office. But unlike the lobby of the medical office, where pricey Phil & Teds and Bugaboo baby carriages are parked while their charges are inside, here, there’s no designated area for strollers.
“It’s fun, healthy and a great place for lunch, but there’s not much room between the tables for strollers,” observes TriBeCa resident Lauren Casey, 33.
Cohen, a father of three daughters aged between 18 and 22, acknowledges the problem with a Gallic shrug.
“Yes, like a lot of restaurants, we have limited space,” he says.“But we do our best to accommodate strollers whenever we can.”
Cohen, a bon viveur who opened Saleya as an investment in the community, admits that he was worried about the response of his patients; would it seem like he’d strayed from his calling?
“I thought: ‘How will they react?’ ” says Cohen, who employs 30 doctors and nurse practitioners in 10 branches across the city. “Will they think: ‘What business do you have opening a restaurant when you’re supposed to be taking care of our babies?’ ”
So far, that hasn’t been the response.
Loyal parents have flocked to the restaurant, the exterior of which is painted the same distinctive aqua-blue used for all the branches of Tribeca Pediatrics in New York City.
As for the menu, it’s simple, light and influenced by the dishes that Cohen’s mother, Marcelle, who still lives in Nice, prepared for him as a child.
“The food is not chi-chi or fancy, but tasty and simple,” says the pediatrician. “It’s not French cooking with a lot of creamy sauces, but soups, salads and good pieces of meat.”
Cohen pays close attention to the wine selection, which boasts a section called Michel’s Cellar, including a few favorite bottles of Côtes du Rhône.
“It’s light and you can drink it with pretty much everything,” he says, adding that “you don’t have to be concerned about getting a headache the next morning.”
Though it’s still early days, Cohen has grand plans for expanding Saleya, which opened in November, including an upstairs lounge.
And he’s back on the dating scene after an amicable split from his wife, artist Jeannie Weissglass. It’s a fact that he downplays — merely acknowledging, of being newly unattached, that “eet ees a lot of fun” — but the single moms of New York will surely rejoice.
After all, they already know he likes kids.
jridley@nypost.com