Union Square Cafe’s Next-Door Takeaway Shop Opens This Friday

The “Italian” breakfast sandwich, with frying peppers, spinach, provolone, and mozzarella. Photo: Melissa Hom

When Danny Meyer found a new home for Union Square Cafe, the lease included the space next door. And so what had been Duke’s Original Roadhouse is now Daily Provisions, a takeout shop and café serving breakfast and lunch, with plans for dinner come spring. There are crullers and breakfast sandwiches, salads and rotisserie chicken, and all manner of hot and cold Joe Coffee drinks. But these tempting distractions might disguise the shop’s true identity: as a showcase for the naturally leavened breads baked on site from freshly milled, Maine-grown grains. The basement bakery — a first for Meyer’s restaurant group — supplies all of Union Square Cafe’s and Daily Provisions’s rolls, focaccia, baguettes, caraway ryes, and USC sprezzatura, the house loaf. (You may recognize that last one as miche, but Meyer has christened it after the Italian word that means making something very difficult look easy.)

Chef Carmen Quagliata stuffs his gougères with soft scrambled eggs, pepper jack, and spinach. Photo: Melissa Hom
The house bread, USC sprezzatura, spread with apple-pie preserves and butter. Photo: Melissa Hom
Crullers come in three flavors: cinnamon sugar, original glaze, and maple. Photo: Melissa Hom
Whole rotisserie chicken. Photo: Melissa Hom
Chicken milanese sandwich with kale and Caesar vinaigrette. Photo: Melissa Hom
Little Gem salad with apples, beets, celery, walnuts, and blue-cheese dressing. Photo: Melissa Hom
Cookie-shaped blondies with white chocolate and pecans. Photo: Melissa Hom
Spinach, garlic, and cheese focaccia. Photo: Melissa Hom
Breads for sale and Joe Coffee drinks. Photo: Melissa Hom

103 E. 19th St., nr. Park Ave. S.; 212-488-1505

*This article appears in the February 6, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

Union Square Cafe’s Next-Door Takeout Shop Opens This Friday