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Marcel the Shell: A Restaurant Emerges at the Breuer

Behind the design of the new Sotheby's restaurant, a collaboration with Robin and Stephen Alesch, which manages to achieve a dramatic setting within significant landmark constraints.

Robin and Stephen Alesch
Marcel is a joint venture between Sotheby’s and Robin and Stephen Alesch’s firm Roman and Williams—part of a quiet strategic initiative in which Sotheby’s tries to monetize more of its real estate footprint through hospitality. Photo: Cass Bird/Courtesy of Sotheby's
Marion Maneker
April 17, 2026

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A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at a plush banquet in the new Sotheby’s restaurant, Marcel, speaking to proprietor Robin Alesch as the project barreled toward last night’s opening. Alesch was explaining how she grew up a classic New York City kid, the only child of cosmopolitan parents who took her to the city’s great restaurants like the Russian Tea Room and Tavern on the Green. “We went to the Four Seasons and Windows on the World,” she reminisced. “But I don’t think we ever made it to Maxwell’s Plum.”