Foul Witch, the East Village restaurant from Roberta’s, served its last dinner on Sunday, November 30, closing after just under three years at 15 Avenue A, between Houston and East Second streets. The Italian restaurant and wine bar, from Roberta’s co-founders Brandon Hoy and chef Carlo Mirarchi, opened in January 2023 with pasta, meats, and a dynamic natural wine list served in a long, narrow room with an open kitchen and a wood-fired oven.
“After much consideration, we made the difficult decision to close the doors of Foul Witch and bring this chapter to a close,” the duo said in a statement. “We are incredibly appreciative of the support and enthusiasm our guests have shown since our opening, and are grateful for our dedicated team, whose creativity and commitment shaped the spirit of Foul Witch. We deeply value our neighbors and the NYC community for their energy and support since the opening of Foul Witch.”
The East Village spot was a revival of Roberta’s temporary restaurant at Frieze Art Fair, dubbed Foul Witch by Blanca, referring to Roberta’s Bushwick fine-dining restaurant that closed in April. Hoy and Mirarchi, known for turning their Bushwick pizzeria into a mini-empire, used Foul Witch to push a more experimental, “spooky Italian” idea: seasonal pastas, charcuterie, and large-format meats instead of pizza.
Critics jumped on Foul Witch early. Eater’s Robert Sietsema described the opening as a new restaurant built on pasta, pork, and wine; he highlighted the potatoes with paddlefish roe, testa, goat garganelli, and pork neck. It remained “seriously weird,” a few months later, serving “modern Italian with discordant notes that zap you out of comfort.” In June 2023, Pete Wells at the New York Times reviewed the restaurant under the headline “Foul Witch Summons the Ghost of Blanca,” noting how Mirarchi had carried some of Blanca’s tasting-menu sensibility into a looser a la carte format. The publication later included Foul Witch on its list of the 12 best new restaurants of 2023 and ranked it 53rd on its 2024 list of the 100 best restaurants in the city. Foul Witch was also a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2024.
The team isn’t leaving the address entirely. A spokesperson says they will use the space as a private dining room for Roberta’s, citing demand for group events. At the same time, they’re focused on other projects, including the opening of Ezio’s in Miami and a slate of larger music festivals, on- and off-site activations, and collaborations with other restaurateurs and artists across the country, a spokesperson says. The closure comes as Roberta’s moves beyond its indie roots as it grows. In 2024, Roberta’s and R Slice opened its first Manhattan location in the Penn District, a large, two-level restaurant and slice shop at 1 Pennsylvania Plaza, between 33rd and 34th streets, near Madison Square Garden and Penn Station.