West Village, nearest Christopher St–Sheridan Sq (1)
The Spotted Pig is permanently closed. We keep this page for readers researching its history and the chefs who passed through.
The West Village Gastropub That Brought the Michelin Star to a Burger
The Spotted Pig sat on the corner of West 11th and Greenwich Street in the West Village from 2004 to 2020. Chef April Bloomfield and operator Ken Friedman built it as New York's first proper gastropub, a two-floor room that paired cask ale with a kitchen good enough to hold a Michelin star from 2006 through 2016, per the Michelin Guide archive.
It rewarded anyone willing to wait. The room took no reservations, so the line for the chargrilled burger and the ricotta gnudi ran out the door most nights. It frustrated large groups and anyone in a hurry, which was most of the point. Jay-Z and Bono were early investors, and the upstairs room drew a celebrity crowd that the downstairs regulars mostly ignored.
The Spotted Pig is the rare closed restaurant whose recipes outlived it. Bloomfield's burger and gnudi are still copied across the city.
Two floors of dark wood, pig figurines on every shelf, and tin ceilings gave the room a London-pub feel transplanted to the West Village. The ground floor held the bar and the wait; the second floor was the quieter dining room. Wikipedia notes the building has since changed hands, and the space no longer operates as the Pig.
The drinks list leaned British, with cask ale poured properly and a wine list built for the food rather than for show. The food is what reviews remembered. Order the chargrilled burger with Roquefort and shoestring fries, the dish The New York Times and Gothamist both treated as the city benchmark, and the ricotta gnudi that became Bloomfield's signature. Both pulled from the kitchen that earned the star.
- The burger was the entire reason to queue. Reviewers across Time Out New York and Gothamist returned to it for years and ranked it among the city's best.
- Go for the food, not the upstairs scene. The celebrity room got the press, but regulars came for Bloomfield's cooking on the ground floor.
- The 2017 New York Times investigation into Ken Friedman changed how the room was remembered. The closure in 2020 followed a harassment settlement, per Robb Report.
- Readers tracing the history of the modern American gastropub.
- Anyone who wants the recipe lineage behind the Roquefort burger and the gnudi.
- Skip the trip: the room is closed, so use this as a reference, not a plan.