We always have plenty of Paris, here in New York—the bistros, the brasseries, the gilded pâtisseries, an entire city within a city mimicking, to various degrees of accuracy, the City of Light. It’s less common to find a place that strays beyond the edge of town, out past the banlieues, maybe into another bit of the country entirely—a shame, really, since it’s not like the balance of France is a culinary wasteland, and I wonder sometimes if Manhattan will collapse under the weight of yet another red-and-gilt bistro. This is all to say that the time feels ripe for a restaurant like Zimmi’s, a very French—and very Provençal—little spot that opened in December, with a kitchen run by the American (but solidly French-pedigreed) chef Maxime Pradié, who draws inspiration from summers spent in the South of France, learning to cook with his grandmother.
Zimmi’s occupies a tiny, charming storefront positioned on a tiny, charming corner of the West Village. Its large, wall-size windows, their casements painted a downy shade of white, look out across Bedford Street onto a row of old and characterful brownstones, including number 75½, whose façade, at nine and a half feet across, is allegedly the city’s narrowest (and therefore most charming). The restaurant’s interior is cramped, in a warm and elegant sort of way; past the scrum at the host stand is a pint-size bar, and a brief field of tables beyond. The restaurant is the creation of the longtime hospitality pro Jenni Guizio, formerly a beverage director at Union Square Hospitality Group, who here is stepping for the first time into the role of proprietor. Alumni of that group run some of the city’s most pleasing-to-be-in establishments, which tend to share a common welcoming temperament more than a particular culinary signature. At Zimmi’s (which Guizio named for the famed American designer and metalworker Marie Zimmermann—not very Provençal, but what’s in a name, anyway), it shows in the details, and the ways the details shape the mood. The music is low and happy, the brown gingham tablecloths disarmingly chic—and conversations struck up with strangers are of the “Oh, God, is that the lamb, it looks divine” variety.