When the restaurateur Carlos Suarez (owner of Bobo) was away at English boarding school, he missed the rustic meals cooked by his mother, Rosemary. “My father had his own business, so he worked a lot,” Suarez said. “Family dinner was our opportunity to sit together and enjoy her cooking: salads with tomatoes or avocados from the garden, shepherd’s pie and schnitzel (she’s English with an Austrian background).” Now living in a house with an olive grove in Lucca, Italy, Rosemary’s specialties have since changed, and it comes as no surprise that her son has named his new Italian restaurant in her honor. In the space that once housed Cushman’s, then Sutter’s Bakery, Suarez has Wade Moises, former chef de cuisine of Eataly, overseeing a kitchen that makes fresh pasta and focacce, as well as seasonal dishes prepared with ingredients grown on the restaurant’s organic rooftop garden. (The day’s harvest gets dropped down to the dining room in a basket on a block and tackle.) “It’s an opportunity to bring the source of the food literally a flight of stairs away from your dining table,” said Suarez, who plans to give students from the local Public School 41 tours and lessons on “how to turn those vegetables into lunch. We’re hoping to offer generosity, camaraderie and engagement — a sense of community,” he said. There’s another unusual aspect to the joint. Beyond the reclaimed wooden table tops, Suarez has gone green with a Dekar Design interior: “Instead of filling space with taxidermy and black and white photos, we used nature as our décor.” Inside are towers of artichokes and lemons, even “little Dr. Seuss” blueberry trees. Outside, the roof will also soon feature a beehive and chicken coop.  Rosemary’s opens next week for dinner. 18 Greenwich Avenue; (212) 647-1818.  This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:  The address was incorrect in an earlier version of the post. It is 18 Greenwich Avenue, not 118 Greenwich Avenue.
From garden to table, in minutes: Carlos Suarez teams up with Wade Moises, formerly of Eataly, to create Italian food with ingredients grown from the restaurant's organic rooftop garden.