Joe Ng and Eddie Schoenfeld take the cramped space below their hit restaurant RedFarm out for a spin as a Peking duck-centric eatery. The idea hidden in the name of this restaurant is that Decoy will divert customers from RedFarm, perhaps winnow their walk-ins, and placate waiting diners with a bar menu all their own and a cocktail list of Asian-inflected drinks to wile away the minutes until a table opens up upstairs.
When we say "cramped," we really mean it; this is not the usual vaguely packed sort of elbow-knocking—this is a family dinner that too many relatives showed up at. It is a happy discomfort, set in a place that your grandmother, obsessed with canard-related art and tchotchkes, might have designed in a fit of pique after your grandfather bought a new set of expensive golf clubs without her permission.
Hopefully you like duck, because that's what's for dinner, augmented with starters and sides and perhaps a little jerk chicken or lobster. But mostly, you're in for a lot of duck, done as a three-course meal cooked to order in the small spot's special Peking duck oven, which limits the restaurant's nightly reservations by only managing about two dozen birds a night.
Decoy is located in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The western slice of Greenwich Village—although some will tell you it's a separate neighborhood altogether; don't listen to them—the West Village is a somewhat sleepier version of its larger neighborhood, with many tree-lined streets populated by residential buildings and punctuated ever-so-lightly with restaurants and bars. The locals have fought notoriously hard throughout the years to keep raucous bars and clubs from staying open—or even opening at all—to preserve the relative quiet of their neighborhood. The West Village stretches east from the Hudson River to 6th Avenue, and north from Houston Street to West 14th. It's northwestern corner is chewed off by the Meatpacking District, where the very sorts of restaurants and bars West Village residents try to keep out of their 'hood flourish. The majority of Bleecker Street's dining, shopping, and drinking options exist on the West Village's end of the street, with a small shopping mecca surrounding the intersection of 7th Avenue, where many high-end retailers have stores, like Brooks Brothers' Black Fleece, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and a whole lot more. There's plenty of history here, and the bars are no exception—Dylan Thomas famously stumbled out of the White Horse Tavern heavy with whiskey on the night he expired at the Hotel Chelsea. For those aiming to avoid the thumping, throbbing nightclubs of the Meatpacking District, jazz can be had at Fat Cat, the legendary Village Vanguard, and smaller, quieter establishments like 55 Bar. If you'd like a more structured day of drinking, the folks at the Literary Pub Crawl put on a fantastic and informative tour. The sophisticated residents of the West Village have led a number of excellent restaurants to open in the neighborhood, from Italian favorite Sant Ambroeus, April Bloomfield's game-changing gastropub The Spotted Pig, Yerba Buena, and Perry St.. Of course, if you're not in the mood for high-end cuisine in mood-inducing settings, there's pizza on offer at John's of Bleecker Street, but you'd be better served by walking a little further east and feasting one our favorite New York slice at Joe's. And if it's a burger you're looking for, the city's first Umami Burger is lurking over on 6th Avenue, while perennial favorite Corner Bistro is on 7th. While the West Village is low on museums, it has two of the best independent cinemas in the city between Film Forum and neighborhood landmark IFC Center.
There are no events taking place on this date.