Walk into Peasant on a Friday night and you'll understand why Robert Sietsema called the wood-fired kitchen setup "a magnificent sight to behold." The hearth dominates the room—a brick-and-mortar anchor that has been burning continuously since 1999, when founder Frank DeCarlo built much of the restaurant with his own hands and brought wood-fired Italian cooking to Nolita before the neighborhood knew it needed it. When Marc Forgione, an Iron Chef America veteran, took over in 2020, he didn't strip the place down for a refresh. He rebuilt the hearth itself and recommitted to an ethos that had never wavered: everything matters more when fire touches it.
Forgione's whole-animal program, launched earlier this year, treats meat with the kind of respect that feels almost obsolete in New York dining—sourcing from local farms and rotating through slow-rotisserie goat, lamb, rabbit, duck, and suckling pig. The new 'Whole Animals & Large Cuts' feasting menu is built for groups of two to ten, making Peasant one of the few places in the city where ordering becomes an act of commitment. You're not just getting dinner; you're getting ceremony. A lemony branzino arrives charred on the outside, the flesh still tender from the flames. Rigatoni alla vodka with broccolini hits differently when it's finished over fire. Even the cacio e pepe with pistachio pesto—a dish that could coast on technique alone—carries the faint smoke that makes you taste the wood.
What makes Peasant matter now, in 2025, is that it refuses to calcify. The basement wine bar remains a quiet refuge for serious drinkers. The "Playing with Fire" summer series continues to bring guest chefs from across the country to cook over the same hearth. Yet the restaurant never feels like it's performing its history. "Every morning we light a fire and start cooking," Forgione says. "What's better than that?" It's a simple question that explains everything: Peasant isn't nostalgia for wood-fired cooking. It's the thing itself, perfected over decades.
For the whole-animal feasts, book ahead. For everything else, arrive early on a weeknight when the room is quieter and the fire is all yours to watch.