GOAT WORLD: Morgenstern calls the communal back deck “an East Village version of ‘Melrose Place.'” (Zandy Mangold)
A table made from wood scraps and a “wasp-nest ladder.” (Zandy Mangold)
Not many people would think to decorate their apartment with a desiccated wasp nest, but Goat Town restaurateur Nicholas Morgenstern sensed it would suit his Alphabet City studio perfectly.
“I was driving back from Ohio, and I saw it by the side of the road,” he recalls. “I decided to hang it from a ladder that I’d found in a dumpster in TriBeCa.”
Morgenstern christened the creation the “wasp-nest ladder.” It’s tucked in the corner behind his bed, which is draped with a vintage Pendleton throw. At the foot of the bed are two cowhide rugs he picked up at flea markets in New York and Oregon. A mid-century oak dresser hugs one wall. A vintage map of San Francisco hangs opposite it.
CHEF EDUARD FRAUNEDER STIRS IT UP DOWNTOWN
The living area is outfitted with two low-slung, “Mad Men”-esque sofas and a ’60s-era chair. Other pieces of furniture were rescued from the streets of the East Village.
“I grew up with flea market stuff,” explains the 32-year-old California native of his decorating inspiration. “My dad was really into estate sales. And I actually got rid of a lot of stuff when I moved in here.”
He’d been renting a large loft space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and commuting to his Fort Greene restaurant, the General Greene, which he opened in July 2008.
The apartment “was too big,” he says. “I only lived in one of the rooms.”
And Morgenstern, who’d been the pastry sous chef at Daniel and head pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern and Gilt, was willing to sacrifice size if it meant returning to Manhattan. (He still waxes poetic about his first city apartment, on Thompson Street, a walkup with a bathtub in the kitchen.)
“I found this place through friends who lived here,” says Morgenstern, who signed a lease for his 600-square-foot, second-floor apartment on East Third Street last March. “They got pregnant and moved to a bigger space, right next door.”
Morgenstern was also itching to open a new eatery after selling his interest in the General Greene, a restaurant perhaps best known for his smooth, eggless ice cream (in funky flavors like peanut butter bacon banana). Two possible spaces in the neighborhood fell through before he came across an empty storefront, on East Fifth Street near Avenue A.
He signed the lease that summer, hired a trusted team of designers (Evan and Oliver Haslegrave of the Brooklyn-based firm hOmE) and teamed up with chef Joel Hough (of Cookshop) to open Goat Town (derived from the Dutch word for Gotham). The inviting space, combined with a farm-to-table approach to cooking, was a hit almost immediately after opening Dec. 2.
“I really love the way the restaurant turned out,” says Morgenstern. “I wanted it to be comfortable, to feel kind of diner-like . . . a place where people could come and hang out but have it not be too casual.”
He credits much of Goat Town’s groovy vibe to the design team, who created the curved tin ceiling, the booths, the weathered copper bar.
“I knew I wanted some of those things in the design,” Morgenstern says, “but they were the ones who came up with the idea of the subway-tiled booths. Everyone who comes here says something about the booths. They can’t believe how comfortable they are.”
It’s a good thing Morgenstern is a fan of the space, given that he spends close to 18 hours a day there, by his own accounting. His office is there, he bakes most of the restaurant’s cookies, cakes and tarts, he’s readying the basement to manufacture ice cream and he’s hoping to open the back yard in the spring (it’s now a vegetable garden).
When Morgenstern does have free time, you’ll find him relaxing on his apartment building’s communal back deck — “It’s kind of an East Village version of ‘Melrose Place’; everyone [in the four apartments] is always outside hanging out,” he says — or tooling around town in one of his many cars.
“I own a few cars, I have a new Subaru wagon, an old Datsun truck,” Morgenstern says. “And I belong to the Classic Car Club [which loans out fancy automobiles]. My dad always had tons of cars, and I grew up racing on the amateur circuit.”
But it’s clear that his strongest passion is Goat Town.
“I’m really content with what I’m doing; I’m really lucky that it’s just two partners running the business, that I don’t have some big investment firm knocking at my door demanding money,” he says. “That is a luxury in this business.”
Nicholas Morgenstern’s favorite things
* A vintage map of San Francisco
* The cowhide rugs
* A coffee table that he made himself using scraps of hard pine from Build It Green
* The “wasp-nest ladder”
* Industrial shoe caddies he constructed
* Vintage Pendleton blankets
* The back deck of the building