COUNTER PARTS: Mullen designed the kitchen and built the bar himself. (Christian Johnston)
MODERN LOVE: The loft’s sleeping area features vintage touches, like a teak Danish Modern dresser. (Christian Johnston)
A butcher-block table, which was found in the basement of an old restaurant, serves as a makeshift bar. (Christian Johnston)
When it comes to success in New York — especially in New York real estate — it often comes down to who you know. That’s what happened when Seamus Mullen, chef-owner of the newly opened West Village hot spot Tertulia, went to check out a fifth-floor Flatiron loft that was coming on the rental market.
“There were five people all there with their checkbooks,” recalls Mullen of the showing two years ago. “The apartment was raw — there was no kitchen, there was no proper bathroom, it used to be an office — but I loved the location.”
As Mullen and his broker were leaving, the chef bumped into another chef, Masaharu Morimoto, who had an office on the building’s second floor. Morimoto told him he had to have the apartment, and the famed Japanese chef contacted the building’s owner to recommend Mullen.
When it turned out that the owner, a Spanish architect, knew Mullen’s cooking — Boqueria, Mullen’s former tapas restaurant, is nearby — the apartment was his.
“It was a total coincidence,” Mullen says.
Several improvements were made by the owner before Mullen moved into the open, 1,200-square-foot loft — central air was installed and the walls were repaired — but many additional renovations were largely handled by Mullen himself.
“The landlord gave me a budget to work with and said that I had to work with their contractor. The first thing they did was the kitchen,” says Mullen, who helped choose the cabinets and weighed in on the overall design.
The chef also got his own hands dirty.
“I made all the light fixtures [in the dining area] and built the bar/countertop in the kitchen,” he says. “I built the bookshelves [that separate the sleeping area from the rest of the loft] using reclaimed wood and plumbing fixtures. And I built out part of the [private] roof deck.”
So, he can whip up a gourmet meal and build a table to eat it on?
“I grew up on a farm in Vermont,” Mullen says. “If you don’t know how to use tools, well, then, there’s something wrong with you. My cabinets are filled with tools.”
Maybe it’s because of his rural upbringing that Mullen, 37, calls himself “an old soul.” The loft, which he shares with his fiancée Lynn, is filled with vintage items that he’s picked up at flea markets, antique shops and thrift stores in Vermont, New York and Spain, where he cooked at the two-Michelin-star Basque restaurant Mugaritz and in Barcelona before returning to New York in 2005.
Everywhere you look in the loft, your eyes land on something eclectic: the collection of antique meat grinders, meat slicers and kitchen knives; the vintage maps, clocks and prints; the stuffed wild-animal heads; the cabinet of barbershop paraphernalia (including straight razors and a shaving brush) above a 1930s-era barber’s chair; the old-school scales (some to weigh meat, others people).
“I love old things, and I can’t resist buying them. It’s never-ending,” Mullen says a bit sheepishly. “I have more stuff in storage downstairs. I have prints I can’t put up because there isn’t room.”
He realizes that it’s become a bit of a problem. When Mullen and his fiancée went to the Brimfield, Mass., antique show and flea market this summer to find pieces for his new restaurant, he was “forbidden to buy anything that wasn’t for Tertulia.”
The plethora of curios in the chef’s home are offset by sleek furnishings, like a black leather sofa and armchair, an Eames coffee table, an Eames chair and ottoman, and Danish modern furniture throughout.
Also taking up space are four bicycles, three of which belong to Mullen.
“I ride everywhere in the city, mostly on my beige Bianchi,” Mullen says.
That includes thrice-weekly visits to the Union Square Greenmarket, where he meets his chefs to decide what might be included on Tertulia’s menu that day.
“That’s followed by supervising deliveries, butchering, filleting, making sure everyone is on task with prep,” Mullen says. “I’m usually there until midnight, seven days a week.”
His dedication to Tertulia, which opened for dinner last month and is one of NYC’s most buzzed-about eateries, goes beyond just the food, an homage to the northern Spanish region of Asturias.
“I wanted the restaurant to feel like it had been there for a very long time. I wanted it to be personal, special, unique,” says Mullen of Tertulia’s design, which his fiancée also had a hand in. “The materials used were meant to evoke Spain, but not to be too literal.”
Much of the decor at the rustic West Village restaurant was in fact sourced in Spain, like the hand-hewn “chef’s table” (with a great view of the open kitchen), the golden door knocker in the shape of a hand and the mounted corkscrew behind the bar.
Other elements were inspired by the cider houses of the Asturias region and recreated for the restaurant, including the combination wood-and-charcoal oven/grill, the pulley lighting system along the walls and the trapeze-shaped light fixtures hanging from the ceiling.
One thing Mullen did insist on for Tertulia’s design was that “everything decorative also had to be functional.” So, the flip-down wood tables can be adjusted depending on how crowded the space gets, and a sliding wood door can be pulled out to separate the front and back of the restaurant.
In addition to planning a breakfast and lunch menu for Tertulia (which should be introduced later this fall) and putting the finishing touches on his first cookbook, “Hero Food” (which will be published early next year), Mullen’s also carved out time for the New York City Wine & Food Festival. He’s taking part in the Meatball Madness event Sept. 29, competing with the likes of Joey Campanaro and Michael Psilakis for the honor of best meatball.
But Mullen also is planning to work on several things around the house. “Finishing building the roof deck — that’s where the next amount of my energy is going to go,” he says. “I also thought about painting some of the walls, the kitchen cabinets in Pantone colors and maybe painting the elevator door with chalkboard paint.”
And, of course, Mullen can’t resist adding a few more pieces here and there. “I’d like to have more contemporary artwork actually,” he says, smiling. “That’s the next thing I’m going to collect.”
SEAMUS MULLEN’S FAVORITE THINGS
* His collection of antique meat grinders (including a mini, chipmunk-size grinder)
* An 1930s Emil J. Paidar barber’s chair and a collection of antique barbershop paraphernalia
* A Cinelli Supercorsa Pista handmade track bicycle
* A framed orange silk map of Burma that his grandfather carried when he was in the OSS in Asia in WWII (paper maps would disintegrate in the humidity, so their maps were printed on silk scarves)
* An antique pottery “Pure Lard” slab from turn-of-the-century England
* The 19th-century French farm table that his grandmother bought from Chuck Williams, the founder of Williams-Sonoma, in the 1960s
*The black leather sofa and armchair, designed by Robin and Lucienne Day in the 1960s, and reissued by Habitat in the 1990s
* Antique knives from all over the world—some were family heirlooms; others he found on eBay