Inside the Bars of Printemps New York, the Hotly Anticipated French Department Store Opening Downtown

Kent Hospitality Group, the restaurant and bar collective founded by the late chef James Kent, has a reputation for bringing dining and drinking to some of New York’s most beautiful, historic, yet previously publicly inaccessible, addresses. The restaurants Crown Shy and Saga and the bar Overstory, for example, are all housed at 70 Pine Street, an Art Deco building whose uppermost floors were once used only by A.I.G. executives for board meetings and contract-signings.

But with its involvement in the opening of Printemps, the first New York location of the famous French department store chain, the group may have outdone itself.

The swanky Printemps, which was founded in 1865 by Jules Jaluzot, has 20 department stores across France. Its first-ever American store is situated across two floors of 1 Wall Street, an Art Deco landmark in the Financial District of Manhattan. Most of the department store — with its opulent Art Deco and Art Nouveau touches, all rendered by Paris-based architect Laura Gonzalez — was built from scratch, with one very notable exception.

The entrance at 1 Wall Street leads to the legendary Red Room, a 30-plus-feet-tall mosaic masterpiece of red and gold tiles created in 1931 by the trailblazing, New York City-born muralist Hildreth Meière (1892-1961). The room originally served as the reception room of Irving Trust, which, after the financial crash of 1929, used the architecture to communicate a silent message of prosperity to the world.

Beverage director Natasha Bermudez pouring a sidecar that accompanies the La Goulue cocktail. The other cocktail is The Hildreth’s Room. Both can be found in the Red Room Bar.

Because Irving Trust was a private commercial bank, only that bank’s wealthy clients and its employees ever had the privilege of laying eyes on the room’s web-like ceramic design, grand arched windows, and dramatic pillars. In June 2024 the Red Room was designated an interior landmark. One of the stipulations of such a designation is that the space be made open to the public. Thus, the chamber is now home to Printemps’ vast womens’ shoe department, which is illuminated by several towering light fixtures shaped like lilypads; the company calls it a “shoe forest.”

But step a few yards beyond the Manolos and Valentinos and you’ll find the Red Room Bar.

Patrons at Salon Vert, a raw bar concept.

For this bar, and the two other bars to be found among the five food concepts in the Printemps complex, Harrison Ginsberg, the bar director of the Kent Hospitality Group, tapped Natasha Bermudez. Bermudez had been at the Llama Group for the last six years, rising to the role of bar director, when Ginsberg’s call came.

In addition to the Red Room Bar, which will be open every day from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Bermudez oversees the drinks at Maison Passerelle, Printemps’ fine dining concept; and Salon Vert, the second-floor, 32-seat raw bar. Printemps’ culinary director is the James Beard Award–winning chef Gregory Gourdet, who worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten for 10 years before he moved to Portland, Ore., and made his name cooking Haitian food at his restaurant Kann. Gourdet’s food at Printemps draws not on classic French cuisine, per se, but the cuisines of former French colonies in the Caribbean, Asia, and Canada.

A similar pan-French approach to ingredients can be found at the Red Room Bar. Among the elixirs that find their way into the bar’s cocktails are rums from Haiti, Cognac, Calvados, Pineau de Charentes, yellow and green Chartreuse, absinthe, and Suze.

Beverage director Natasha Bermudez making The Hildreth’s Room cocktail.

“The menu is very much French with a touch of New York flair, and a touch of Caribbean influence,” says Bermudez. “We have to bring some of the Caribbean flavors. Those are the kind of things you’re going to see a lot throughout the menus: coconut, guava, plantain, banana. There is no flavor that I’m afraid of.”

The Hildreth’s Room cocktail, for example, which is named after the artist who created the Red Room, is almost entirely French in makeup. A riff on the classic Bijou, it’s composed of Calvados, chamomile-infused vermouth, verjus, Bénédictine, and absinthe. The Kafe Negroni adds to the usual Negroni build a dose of Haitian coffee accented by various spices associated with Haitian cuisine; there is a swipe of red cacao paint on the outside of the glass, a nod to the drink’s colorful surroundings.

One of the Champagne carts that rolls around in the Salon section of the store.

La Goulue, named for a French can-can dancer who was a star of the Moulin Rouge, is a spin on the Pornstar Martini. A glass of clarified rum-sherry-based milk punch is topped with the shell of a half a passion fruit filled with its scooped-out flesh. Bermudez recommends taking a slurp of the passion fruit before moving on to the punch or sidecar of Champagne.

Some of these libations can be enjoyed from a bar cart that will circulate throughout the Red Room, which underwent a years-long, $1 million restoration prior to opening.

“It will roll around and offer Champagne while you try on shoes,” Bermudez says. “I’m like, ‘This is great!’ Should I work in the shoe department?”

For those who wish to remain stationary while drinking, there is a ring of stools with a red floral pattern that encircles the horseshoe-shaped Red Room Bar. To the right of the bar is an alcove of further seating, set beneath an original stained-glass window by Studio Pierre Marie. As for food, the bar will feature oysters, a burger, fries, and caviar service.

The Champagne Bar in the beauty section featuring sommelier Andrew House.

The cocktails at the Salon Vert, which has a dramatic view of Broadway, include classics like a 50/50 Martini and Queen’s Park Swizzle as well as original twists on classics like the Sidecar and Piña Colada. Bermudez oversees a staff of 16 bartenders and five barbacks.

And, of course, the department store will also feature a dedicated Champagne bar. Printemps is French after all.

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