Danny Garcia, the winner of Top Chef in season 21, came off that win on a high in 2024, ahead of opening a new restaurant under restaurateur James Kent’s group, in the Flatiron, Time and Tide. But coinciding with his win, Kent died suddenly, and everything changed. Just a year later, with shakeups and rebranding of the company, and a concept that didn’t quite land, Garcia’s restaurant closed.
Originally, the idea was that Garcia and Kent Hospitality Group would revamp the Time and Tide space into something new while it was being used as a temporary pop-up for Italian restaurant Massara. But since then, Garcia has regrouped, stepping away from the company and starting anew with his own line of products — jarred salsa macha and T-shirts — along with plans to open his own restaurant, under the name Only Goods.
“Only Goods was born of this idea of putting a spotlight on Latin American culture, but also a nod to younger Danny Garcia and the dream I had to open a restaurant,” he tells me.
Danny Garcia wearing Only Goods apparel. Sebastian Mejias
Garcia wants Only Goods to work somewhere between the ubiquitous Puerto Rican bodegas in NYC, “small spaces with dusty cans of beans and there’s one of everything across the wooden shelf,” he says, and the overabundance within Cracker Barrels.
For the eventual daytime restaurant, he wants it to work as what he describes as a luncheonette and a bodega counter up front, and also a casual and cozy restaurant in the back. “Community-first” is a value Garcia mentions often. “We are going to be a restaurant that embodies the neighborhood and what the people need it to be, like a bodega.”
“Time and Tide closing was hard,” Garcia says. “I put everything into that restaurant, so taking that to the chin. It’s not a failure; it was an accomplishment. Did it not last as long as I would have wanted? Sure, but there are learned lessons, and now I get to take those lessons and do the next best thing.”
At the time, Garcia, who has a Puerto Rican and Dominican background, had to figure out what he’d do next, often talking it out with his wife, pastry chef Sumaiya Bangee. “I need to do something that is just wholeheartedly Danny Garcia,” he recounts thinking. And he remembered his wish as a kid coming up in restaurant kitchens of running a sandwich shop, leading to his Only Goods plans.
The salsa macha from Only Goods. Sebastian Mejias
Garcia knows that Puerto Rican food is usually seen as more fast-casual, where “aunties and titís and abuelas cook from steam tables, or you’re getting food on paper plates,” he says. “Let’s shine the light on that, take up our own space, and let’s be the catalyst to open this cuisine a little more and say, ‘Yeah, we can do more than rice and beans and pernil.’” He wants to do for Puerto Rican and Latin American cuisines what chefs are doing for Indian and Afro-Caribbean cuisines in New York now.
There’s also a notable restriction for Only Goods: Garcia is Muslim, so he won’t serve pork, which might be unexpected for a Puerto Rican restaurant. He knows there will be questions about where lechon and pernil are. “Pork’s off the table,” he says, “so what other delicious succulent things can we do?”
Garcia sees the restaurant being halal as another extension of himself and being for his community. “I want Muslims to be able to roll through and be like, ‘I can eat everything on the menu.”
Before Garcia opens the restaurant — there is no lease or address yet, he’s been searching — he’s launching Only Goods as a brand with streetwear and merchandising. (More and more, food brands are getting into clothing and wearable goods, like Barney Greengrass and Cup Noodles.)
Danny Garcia adding salsa macha to a dish during an Eid dinner. Sebastian Mejias
“It’s very fun, laidback, not stuffy,” Garcia says. He tagged Brooklyn-based Nash Studios, led by Alexander King, whom he met through Upper West Side Chino Latino restaurant La Dinastia, and they just vibed. It’s apt that Only Goods abbreviates to OG — “it’s the original, it’s the highest level,” Garcia says. Expect hats, shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, matchbooks, ashtrays, long candles, and more.
And the brand goes hand in hand with Garcia’s food and cooking. Only Goods launched with the salsa macha, which’ll eventually be followed with a guava-tamarind barbecue glaze that he describes as “tangy and spicy.” He’s made a barbecue lamb rib using it.
In fact, he’s cooked those lamb ribs at pop-ups like Theodora last December and plans to do so for the upcoming Pebble Beach Food & Wine this week. For Eid, he debuted Only Goods at his co-hosted dinner at Platform by JBF with chef and cookbook author Ifrah F. Ahmed, where they cooked a Somali-Latin dinner. Next up, he’s got a collaboration at Nashville restaurant Rolf & Daughters on Sunday, April 19.
However the restaurant shakes out, Garcia wants to make sure it’s fun and reflective of who he is. He doesn’t want to cook and feels like he needs to create Spanish food with French techniques, he says. “It’s boring, we’ve done it, we’ve all tasted it, we’ve all seen it. Let’s be a little original and not be afraid to just be different and just be us unapologetically.”