Fairfax

An omelette at the counter, a glass after dark

Order the Parisian omelette and the room explains itself: eggs rolled soft and pale, French in technique, served in a West Village space that runs from morning coffee to evening wine without changing character. Fairfax is an all-day cafe, and the omelette is its clearest statement.

The Israeli breakfast is the other daytime order, a spread rather than a plate, and it is the version of the menu that fills a table. Between the two, breakfast is treated here as cooking rather than as a holding pattern before lunch. Coffee runs alongside from the start of the day, which is what makes the cafe half of the description real rather than decorative.

All-day is an easy claim and a hard format. It means one kitchen cooking eggs in the morning and dinner at night, and one room that has to suit both.

The room, from coffee to wine

The feel is a living room with a wine list: laid-back, a little fashionable, comfortable enough for a solo coffee and composed enough for a late glass. The shift through the day is the point rather than a compromise, and the same tables carry both halves of it.

The fittings read classic rather than of-the-moment, and the scale is intimate enough that eating alone is comfortable. West Village cafes tend to pick a lane. This one holds two, which is why it works as a default: somewhere to start a day and somewhere to end one, without the sense of having walked into a different business after dark. The neighborhood does part of the work, since this is a walking part of the city, which is what an all-day room needs to stay busy between meals.

What to order

Lead with the Parisian omelette if the visit is a morning one, and with the Israeli breakfast if there are two of you and time to sit. Both are why the daytime side has held its reputation.

The Fairfax burger is the order that carries the rest of the day. It is the one dish that works equally at a late lunch and against a glass of red in the evening, and it completes the trio the kitchen is known for. If the evening is the visit, the wine is the reason to stay past the plates, and the kitchen keeps working while the room changes register.