Cosme

Cosme is a Mexican restaurant on East 21st Street in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. It belongs to Enrique Olvera, the chef of Pujol in Mexico City.

Olvera opened it on 21 October 2014, dividing his time between New York and his kitchen in Mexico City. The name comes from the Mercado de San Cosme, a public market in the Mexican capital, a nod to everyday food rather than to the fine-dining world. The site had been a strip club, and the owners tore out its floor and poles and rebuilt the space within months. Nothing in the finished room recalls that past, and the market in the name says more about the food than the building does.

Several chefs have shaped the kitchen. Daniela Soto-Innes ran it as chef de cuisine in its early years, when she was still in her twenties, and Gustavo Garnica and Isabel Coss have also been part of the team. The tostada with uni is the signature dish, and Massimo Bottura counted himself among its fans. Duck carnitas and a meringue flavored with corn husk became the other plates people come back for. Each of them takes a Mexican idea people know well and moves it into a new setting, which is the logic of the whole menu.

The room is contemporary and spare: a long bar with high chairs, gray concrete floors, black chairs at light wooden tables and a black lamp hanging over each one. Pete Wells of The New York Times gave the restaurant three of his four stars. Cosme entered the World's 50 Best list soon after opening and climbed to its highest place in 2021, a run that helped carry Olvera's name and Mexican cooking far beyond Mexico.