Love is full of risks. So it was fitting, perhaps, that I picked Goblin Market, the New American restaurant at 199 Prince Street, for the celebratory dinner of a friend’s recent marriage, even though it's brand-spanking new. So new, in fact, that a waiter was polishing the freshly stenciled sign on the French glass doors when I walked into the 28-seat dining room of the old Soho Cantina. The copper bar and Edison lights were as I’d remembered them, but recent touches, like an eclectic collection of china on the rustic brick wall, a damask banquette and matching chairs and an antique produce weight hanging from the ceiling, gave the place a homey, if hodgepodge, feeling. 

In fact, the décor owes more to the 19th-century poem that serves as the restaurant’s namesake. Executive General Manager Richard Snyder promised his wife that if he ever opened a restaurant, they would name it after the 529-line poem by Christina Rossetti. The couple chose the fabric patterns to match the illustrations in its 1933 edition of the Victorian work, in which goblins sell a delectable fruit to young maidens, who spend their entire lives wanting more. 

Initially, I was not so bewitched. After we ordered, I watched as thick slices of peasant bread and herbed butter were doled out to every customer in the packed restaurant, except our table. Fearing our waiter had forgotten us, I decided to give him “the eyes.” 

“I’m going to time ‘the eyes,’” the new groom joked, looking down at the imaginary watch on his wrist. But it was too late: our waiter had already zoomed over and accommodated us. Although the room never seemed to empty out for the rest of the evening, we continued to feel the love.

It began with the steamed mussels ($10) with a thyme-y, tomato sauce we took turns sopping up with the grilled focaccia bread. The roasted beat and mesclun salad ($9), confettied with pomegranate seeds, came with a bright, citrus vinaigrette, and the creamy rock shrimp risotto ($12) was rich, rich, rich but—laced with lemon—it tasted delicate. 

When our entrees arrived, the communal mood at the table suddenly cooled. Within seconds of being served his steak frites ($19), my friend smothered a head of roasted garlic onto his meat and finished it so quickly I didn’t even manage to steal a bite. (The fries, shoestring thin and crisp, came out of the kitchen a few minutes afterward—tsk, tsk.) And even with two orders of the sea bass ($23) on the table, complimented with chive crème fraîche, a tiny dollop of Nicoise tapenade and precious Yukon potatoes, I only got one bite of the juicy, seared fillet. In truth, I was too happy with my pork belly ($19)—with its crackled skin and silky meat—and the harvest-fresh succotash, to bother with anyone else’s dinner. Though I did make room for a side of the barely-wilted Swiss chard ($5), full of Greenmarket goodness. 

Afterward, as the plates were cleared and we decided we were way too sated for dessert, I marveled at the fact that we were all made so happy by such simple food. (And at my nerve for bringing my newlywed friends to a restaurant that was younger than their own union.) Snyder and his partner, Chef Richard Pelz, have worked together at numerous restaurants in the past—Cabana in the Hamptons, Barna at Hotel Giraffe—but Goblin Market is the first they’ve owned. At less than a week old, it was already operating as smoothly if it had been in the neighborhood for years. I hope the honeymoon lasts. 

Goblin Market 

199 Prince St. (betw. MacDougal & Sullivan Sts.)

212-375-8275