Five Essential Dishes to Order at Charlie Bird
For more than a decade, Charlie Bird chef-owner Ryan Hardy has been serving up Italian-adjacent dishes accompanied by a soundtrack of hip-hop music at his sleek Soho spot. And while the cuisine is inspired by the Mediterranean, drawing influences from regions like Portugal and Spain, Charlie Bird is a New York restaurant first and foremost.
“Charlie Bird is New York City,” says Hardy. “At the time we opened, restaurants were being conceived in boardrooms. They were asking, ‘How do we make things look like Tuscany?’ I was like, wait a minute, we live in New York City. This is the best place on earth.”
Many of the original dishes from 2013 are still on the menu, and have since become cult favorites with copycats found across the city. We sat down with Hardy to chat about five of those essential dishes. In his own words, here’s what you’ve got to order at Charlie Bird, one of the very first restaurants to join Resy a decade ago, in 2014.
More From Resy
Farro Salad
Sungold tomatoes, pistachio, Parmigiano
“This is the original, the O.G., the dish that everybody talks about. It’s kind of funny. The New York Times wrote [about it] in our first couple of weeks of opening, and it has been there ever since. It’s the thing we’re known for.
“It’s funny, I have pictures somewhere of a deli in the East Village that was selling farro salad with the label ‘Charlie Bird Farro Salad.’ I’ve seen it done so many times in so many different iterations.
“Farro is one of the original strains of wheat. We cook it with a little bit of apple cider, water, bay leaves, and salt. Once it’s cooked, the salad is about 50% farro, 50% everything else. It’s pistachio, tomatoes, roasted tomatoes, Parmigiano Reggiano, basil, mint, and arugula. It changes with the seasons; there are usually about six iterations per year. It’s my favorite thing.”
Razor Clams
Fennel, pickled chile
“There’s a love that I have for this thing called neonata di pesce. Think of it as, like, baby anchovies. They’re salt cured and they’re mixed with Calabrian chile. And that combination, to me, is like the ocean.
“I take inspiration from that. We steam the razor clams. We use just the foot of the clam and toss it in a very special type of extra virgin olive oil from Veneto, which is an area of Venice. What grows together, goes together: The olive oil that’s from there goes with the clams that come from Venice. It’s like the one area of Italy where they eat those.
“We take all of the juice from the clams and reduce it down, so it becomes really intense. We dress the chilled meat with that juice, olive oil, lemon juice, and put it back into the shell with little bits of fennel. It’s served on ice, and it’s just delicious.
“It’s four per order. Because they’re seasonal, we only really have them about 290 or 300 days a year. People are always disappointed if there’s an interruption to clamming. These go to about 75% of the tables we have.”
Gnocchi Rosa
Pomodorini, ricotta, basil
“This has been on the menu, and hasn’t changed, since day one. I had started dating my now-wife Agatha, and her mother grew up in Campania right outside of Napoli in Italy. Her father grew up on the other side of the country. When we started dating, they would have these very traditional Italian big meals, and the pasta was the center. I grew up in the Midwest — I didn’t understand this stuff. Even when I started studying Italian food and pasta, I still felt like an outsider looking in, and here I was walking into this family. I couldn’t believe it. I finally found my people.
“They [would usually] have three or four courses of food, and on this particular day, they made gnocchi. In the mountains above Napoli, they make this one specific type that’s closer to cavatelli. They’re made out of ricotta, flour, egg, and a bit of parmesan. I was astounded because I had only learned to make gnocchi with potatoes. I fell in love with it right away.
“Anyway, [Agatha’s] mother’s name is Rosa. It means pink in Italian, and the sauce comes out pink, so that’s how I named it on the menu. She came to the restaurant every day from Long Island; she would make gnocchi with me every day for the first few months that we opened the restaurant and she taught the other cooks to make it, too. I love it.
“It’s very simply done. We do it with preserved cherry tomatoes from Napoli, olive oil, a little bit of hot chile, basil, and a sprinkle of parmesan at the end. So, it is just pasta and tomato sauce, but these things are light as air. They’re pillowy and comforting, particularly on a fall day.”
Roast Chicken
Zucchini, mint, crispy bits
“If a place is known for its roast chicken, it tends to be a place that has lasted for a long time. I can think of Zuni Café in San Francisco, or Balthazar. These types of things survive time because they’re so identifiable. They over deliver on something that is so peasant: It’s meant to be the kind of thing you can eat frequently, and it’s not expensive or a treat like beef or fish.
“When we opened Charlie Bird, there wasn’t really a downtown restaurant that was casual and fun and used the same high-quality ingredients but didn’t have white tablecloths. There was not a lot of fun happening in those types of restaurants.
“We were serving wine in a button-down with our sleeves rolled up; we weren’t wearing toques. I was wearing jeans and Vans in the kitchen; I still cook in Vans. To go from the fine dining world I was in, from three-Michelin-star kitchens, this was a radical move.
“I wanted to cook Italian food. I’m influenced by Mediterranean food of all types: French, Spanish, Portuguese, you name it. It’s the ocean. We thought, ‘What goes well with those things?’ Of course we wanted to have raw fish, veggies, and pastas. But what we really wrote the menu around was drinking a great bottle of Burgundy and eating roast chicken and French fries.
“Who says you can’t have great pasta and great chicken and fries? That was a very revolutionary thought process for people. So, I think the chicken became the center of the entrée section of our menu. It’s always there. We cook it in a unique way: It’s spatchcocked, so we take the bones out and lay it straight down so the skin gets very crispy. We make something called crispy bit salad that comes with the chicken, which is bits of bread that are sautéed in the chicken fat until they get crispy, and the chicken juice gets poured over them with chopped vegetables and herbs. So, you get a sort of bread salad that goes with the chicken. It’s a great Tuesday night dinner.”
Chocolate Budino
Caramelized Rice Krispies, olive oil gelato
“Budino means pudding, so it’s kind of a pudding cake. It’s like a cross between a brownie, chocolate cake, and pudding, so it barely holds together. It’s warm, it’s gooey, it’s like an undercooked brownie, effectively. We do it with caramelized Rice Krispies and olive oil ice cream.
“It’s this whole idea of a sweet chocolate cake with salty grassy notes from the olive oil, and you get this crunch from the caramelized Rice Krispies. It takes me back to being a kid — we love cereal in America. This crossover, again, is my interpretation of the Mediterranean. It’s my interpretation of Italian food. It has these very American notes — that is the ethos of Charlie Bird.”
Charlie Bird is open for dinner nightly beginning at 5 p.m. They serve lunch Wednesday through Friday from noon to 3 p.m., and brunch on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m.
Ellie Plass is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram and X. Follow Resy on Instagram and X, too.
