Caffè Tusk

Espresso early, aperitivo later

Caffè Tusk runs on three things: espresso, aperitifs and wine, in roughly that order through the day. It is the cafe-bistro of the Brass family in NoMad, which makes it the most casual room in the group and the one you can use at almost any hour without ceremony.

Morning belongs to the cafe register, a coffee and a seat. By late afternoon the same room turns European, with an aperitif and a glass of wine doing the work a cocktail list would do elsewhere. The format is all-day rather than segmented, so nothing about a visit needs to be planned around a service, and a thirty-minute stop sits as naturally here as an evening that keeps going.

Inside the Evelyn, beside a bar and a brasserie

The cafe occupies part of the Evelyn Hotel, a landmark Art Deco building established in 1903, alongside two siblings under the same ownership. The Tusk Bar handles cocktails, oysters, a raw bar and seafood-driven small plates; BRASS is the full New York brasserie.

Caffè Tusk sits in the middle lane between them, and that is the useful thing to know when choosing a room. It is the entry point rather than the occasion: a coffee stop, a midday pause, an aperitif before dinner elsewhere in the building, or a glass of wine without committing to a brasserie table. The Euro-inspired framing points at cafe culture rather than a chef-led menu.

How to order

Start with espresso. It is the drink the cafe is built around and the fastest read on how seriously the room takes its coffee side. From there the sequence follows the clock: an aperitif when the afternoon turns, then wine when the visit becomes more bistro than cafe.

Because the intent is European rather than American in scale, drinks lead and food follows, which is what makes the room usable at any hour rather than only at mealtimes. Espresso, aperitif and wine are the three orders the room is set up to make well, and choosing between them is mostly a question of what time it is. If you want the fuller version of the same hospitality, the bar and the brasserie are a few steps away, and moving between them is part of how the building is meant to work.