In the spirit of turning the page on summer, all of us in the business of restaurant media are compiling our annual Fall Preview lists. Here on the Strong Buzz, I’ll be spending all week looking at fall, with dedicated posts for Manhattan (today), Brooklyn, Queens & Beyond (tomorrow), and another one just for bars (Thursday).
In every guide, you’ll find breaking news you won’t find anywhere else, alongside all the openings you need to book soonest, from ambitious new restaurants, to chefs debuts, and neighborhood cafés designed to bring people together.
I’m kicking us off with Manhattan, divided into a Top 10 list and a longer list of two dozen Restaurants to Watch.
Read it and eat!
I first wrote about Faux last year, and now George McNally’s restaurant is finally opening. Yes, he is Keith McNally’s son. So there’s a lot of pressure, and a lot of attention, but the 23 year old does have his own hospitality chops. George worked at Balthazar and helped open Minetta Tavern in Washington, D.C., where he met chef Kristina Ramos, who now runs the kitchen at Faux.
With George at Friends & Family last week at Faux. It’s fab.
I had a chance to check the place out last week at Friends & Family, and as you might expect, it was buzzing and fabulous. I brought up the age by about two decades, particularly in the dark and sultry downstairs cocktail den. Up on the main floor, George is, as his father, a consummate host — there is a graciousness to the welcome despite the celebrity and fanfare.
The food is appealing and approachable; French-ish, with influences from Marseille, Italy and Greece. We had a Pissaladière with anchovies and tomato, some oysters, a steak tartare, a perfect steak frites, a robust pot of mussels inspired by bouillabaisse, and a very good burger with a special sauce that’s a riff on sauce algérienne, and my favorite dish of the night, a beautifully pan-seared halibut on a glossy beurre blanc with punctuated by tiny lentils du puy.
It opens Sept 3rd! Make a plan. Reserve here.
Daniel will have a riff on his famed Nomad chicken on the menu at Humm.
Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park fame is opening an eponymous restaurant in the former En Brasserie space in the coming months. According to his Insta, the restaurant will be “a reflection of his greatest loves and the lessons he’s learned throughout his life.” He’s a details guy in every way; so he’s working with artisans and craftspeople from around the world to help bring his restaurant to life — from handcrafted wall tiles to ceramic flooring, and custom millwork and bespoke lighting.
Eugene Remm is a busy guy. He opened Or’esh and The Eighty Six on the heels of The Corner Store. His latest Catch Hospitality Group project is a coastal French brasserie from chef Jake Tyler Brodsky, an Eleven Madison Park alum who spent the last several years cooking at Palm Heights in the Cayman Islands.
The menu will hit familiar French notes—Niçoise salad, steak frites—but with a serious raw bar and seafood program that pushes it toward the coast. The cocktail program comes from Lucas Robinson, and the wine list from Emily Buse. Rockwell Group is designing the 70-seat room.
John Fraser is coming full circle. The chef behind Lilac, La Marchande and North Fork Table and Inn is returning to the space where he opened Snack Taverna back in 2003—this time as owner of Ondîne, a tiny 35-seat bistro.
The menu will be classic Fraser: ingredient-driven and farmer-focused plates, constantly evolving, with monthly specials built around individual ingredients or regions. Amy Racine is overseeing the drinks, and pastry chef Sofia Schlieben will make seasonal sorbets, ice creams and mille-feuille.
The room is designed to feel like an intimate dinner party in a West Village brownstone. I’m in.
Camari Mick will explore the culinary connections between West Africa, the Caribbean and the Eastern seaboard at Calabash.
What was once going to be L’Atelier Ébène is now Calabash, an Afro-Caribbean brasserie and bakery from pastry chef Camari Mick. It’s a place where she plans to explore into the culinary connections between West Africa, the Caribbean and the Eastern seaboard.
The all-day restaurant will open in the morning with naturally fermented bread, laminated pastries, breakfast and coffee before moving into lunch with dishes like suya steak and maduros and sardines on Trinidadian bake. Dinner will be served Friday and Saturday.
But Calabash is intended to be more than a restaurant. There will be rotating work from Black and Brown artists, guest-chef collaborations and community dining events. She’ll host Sunday pay-what-you-will suppers to “allow those who can’t normally splurge on a night out to treat themselves within their budget,” she said. The Sunday Supper also allows the kitchen team to grow, she said,“by minimizing leftover ingredients and produce from the week. This not only allows our Back of House team to collaborate and create fun, experimental dishes but also helps them grow more confident in the kitchen.”
Chef Mark Chou is opening his first restaurant, Dragonne, in the storied Annisa space (photo by Emmanuel Rosario)
Chef Mark Chou, formerly of Double Chicken Please and Frenchette, is opening his first restaurant in the former (RIP) Annisa space, beginning a new chapter for a West Village dining room long associated with deeply personal cooking.
Chou has cooked at Eleven Madison and Blue Hill and he’s bringing all of that to the kitchen of Dragonne, a restaurant named for the French feminine form of Dragon.
His vision is for a warm, intimate neighborhood bistro, a gathering place designed for neighborhood regulars as much as for a special evening out. His menu, built for sharing, includes dishes like grilled abalone and shiitake skewers, cumin lamb ribs with Medjool date and Banyuls, and 14-day dry-aged duck with boudin noir and plum.
I’m hoping he’ll have Anita in for a collab. (Hint, hint).
Jorge Luis Pabón and Alexis White will open Mili after a series of successful pop-ups.
Chef Jorge Luis Pabón and hospitality veteran Alexis White of Brass, The Tusk Bar, and Altro Paradiso (the two are partners in life and business), are finally giving Mili a permanent home after a string of sold-out pop-ups.
Pabón’s résumé includes Estela, The French Laundry and El Celler de Can Roca, a lot of talent tucked into this tiny heartfelt restaurant. He promises dishes like cured scallops with melon and shiso, spicy peaches with mortadella, monkfish with spring onion and sea lettuce, and a sunchoke tart with Taleggio and lavender. This is gonna be a good one.
Chef Vitor Mendes will channel the Amazon Rainforest at ira (photo by Daniel Hamaj).
Last week, I went to a fantastic dinner at No. 28 Nomad and ended up sitting next to a chef named Vitor Mendes. We chatted about the industry and cooking, and about the Amazon rainforest in Brazil (if you haven’t read Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder about the rainforest, do it), a place he traveled to often in his native country. On the subway ride back to Brooklyn, I learned that he was formerly the chef de cuisine at Theodora, and that he’s opening iara, a 50-seat restaurant inspired by the cuisine of the Amazon rainforest.
The menu sounds amazing and rare, a unique perspective on rainforest recipes that lean on indigenous ingredients including açaí, cassava, jambu and tucupi, served in a shareable format. The room, designed by Studio WDM, draws inspiration from the Amazon rainforest’s soil rather than its canopy, with a warm palate of terracotta, clay, chocolate brown and burnt orange. I can’t wait for this one.
One Bryant Park will be an elegant 60-seat main dining room serving contemporary Japanese cuisine rooted in the principles of kaiseki.
Midtown is getting a serious Japanese restaurant trifecta. NYC Restaurateur Kwang Ho Lee (Listen & Feel Hospitality) and Culinary Director Tadaaki “Zack” Ishizaki (Odo, Château Restaurant Joël Robuchon) are bringing three concepts to this base of this midtown tower just steps from Broadway and Bryant Park.
There will be the flagship One Bryant Park, an elegant 60-seat main dining room serving contemporary Japanese cuisine rooted in the principles of kaiseki, alongside two other smaller independent chef-driven concepts. Chef Chikara Sono will debut the newest iteration of Kappo Sono, bringing his celebrated kappo dining, and The Kumiko Room, an intimate 16-seat Edomae-style omakase sushi bar under Chef Yoshihiko Kousaka (Kosaka, Jewel Bako), with menus inspired by Japan’s traditional 24-season calendar.
Two acclaimed Japanese imports, one building. Downstairs, Nikuya Tanaka NY, a lauded Ginzu-based kappo-style wagyu spot, will be a 10-seat wagyu omakase counter from Japanese chef Satoru Tanaka, with Kobe and Matsusaka beef alongside sashimi, shabu-shabu and tempura.
Upstairs you’ll find the first U.S. location of Land Bar from Daisuke Ito of Ginza’s Star Bar, where classic cocktails, fruit-driven drinks, and serious relationships with farmers and producers are all in focus. (It’s a favorite of billionaires who fly in just for his martinis.) The back of Land Bar NYC will offer a la carte dining.
Galo explores the food and wine of Portugal in the West Village.
Galo is Chef Nuno Sousa’s an ode to his native Portugal, with a menu that maps the country’s land and sea through petiscos (Portuguese tapas), seafood, arroz, and heritage centerpieces like Galo Recheado (whole stuffed rooster) and Perna de Cabrito Assada (roasted goat leg). If you love Portuguese wine, you’ll find the largest selection in the city, a deep exploration of Portugal’s 4,000-year-old winemaking regions ranging from VinhoVerde, to Bairrada, Dão, and Alentejo to the volcanic Azores, Madeira, and the Port lodges of the Douro. Designed by Lisbon’s Studio Asolfi (their first project in NYC), it feels like it just fell out of postcard from Porto, finished with handmade ceramics and Portuguese craftwork.
Celebrated sushi master Masahiro Yoshitake, whose Tokyo and Hong Kong restaurants have earned Michelin stars, is opening his first American restaurant at 550 Madison Avenue. His debut New York restaurant will occupy the mezzanine of the building’s growing hospitality complex which is already home to Simon Kim’s COTE 550 and Bar Chimera.
Austin Johnson made a name for himself as chef at the of Michelin-starred One White Street and the next-door Rigor Hill market. He left the restaurant last year, got married and became a father, and wanted to do his own thing.
Now comes H. Valley (as in Hudson Valley), a new West Village go-to market in the West Village inspired by the street in Paris Rue de Nil, in the 2nd arr, near where Austin cooked at Frenchie, where locals go from shop to shop to buy provisions; at H. Valley, you’ll be able to get practically everything).
For his new venture, he’s partnering with restaurateur Eytan Sugarman who owns The White Horse Tavern across the street.
Mornings, expect an extensive pastry/laminaton and coffee program, including a house breakfast sandwich stacked of medium eggs and cheese stacked on a warm and homemade sourdough.
For grab-and-go, there will be a hot holding retail box where he will stock breakfast sandwiches in the morning; then it will switch to lunch and later rotisserie chickens, river trout, pot pies, stews, etc. that people can take home and eat. He’ll also have a butchery program of ready to cook, meat, fish, shellfish, poultry with butter compounds to pair. On Fridays, he’ll host a Farmers Market.
Austin will also reprise his successful outdoor omelette station on weekends during fall, spring, and summer (weather permitting). Lastly, he’s doing chef made pet food (named after his dog Dion)!
Twelve years ago Joseph Ko and Bobby Kwak opened Baekjeong; they’re back with their first new concept in a decade, Baekjeong Black, an ode to the convivial spirit at the heart of how Koreans gather, dine, and drink.
The restaurant occupies two floors in the Martinique New York. The first floor will operate as a lunch restaurant and then become Yangban, a cocktail bar with Korean-influenced drinks and small plates at night. Upstairs, Baekjeong, which translates to “butcher,” offers the full premium Korean barbecue experience alongside a butcher display inspired by Seoul’s famous Majang Meat Market. Choose your own Prime, dry-aged and Wagyu beef to cook over your own open fire.
And this is just the beginning: additional Baekjeong locations are planned for Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn.
As I reported last week, Chef Michael Brafman’s is opening a sandwich shop secreted in a Stanton Street deli, but I highly doubt it will stay a secret for long. There’s a Japanese egg-salad-inspired breakfast sandwich, a Chivito, Kaya Toast, a Sonoran Crunchy Wrap, Jamaican jerk pork on coco bread, Sichuan sausage and a muffaletta.
The team behind Kisa and C as in Charlie is going Southern with a country buffet inspired by the restaurants the owners frequented growing up in Atlanta after immigrating from Korea; think Fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, collards, stuffing and cornbread.
Chef Mason Lindahl (of Leon 1909 and Monkey Bar) and co-owner Yasmin Kaytmaz, founder of Derby Cup Coffee, are opening this 48-seat restaurant focused on rustic, spice-forward Mediterranean food, with Turkish influences and a wine list that balances natural and traditional producers.
Let Petit Nissa has a simple and splendid mission: to become a neighborhood restaurant and apéritif bar inspired by lazy, sun-drenched everyday life in Nice, with Provençal small plates, French and Italian wines, vermouth, Amari and cocktails. In!
Bread geeks take note. Austrian bakery MARTIN AUER is coming to New York with a concept devoted almost entirely to rye bread. The centerpiece is a 100-percent rye sourdough made with a 57-year-old mother starter transported from Graz. There will also be open-faced sandwiches like Roe on Rye and Hot Honey Goat Cheese, plus coffee, natural wine and kombucha.
By day, Café Odyssey will serve Chinese-influenced pastries, tea and coffee. At night, Chinese Odyssey will explore Sichuan, Shanghai, Cantonese and other regional Chinese cuisines, incorporating French technique.
New York is getting its first cacao café. At ÓOL, you choose your cacao origin, base, sweetener and spices, and your drink get blended to order. The bi-level space will also host tastings, workshops and gatherings.
Miami’s Motek already has a couple of locations in the city; now it’s bringing its Mediterranean all-day menu to Midtown, including hummus, shawarma, schnitzel, kebabs, house-baked pita, brunch and cocktails. There will also be a grab-and-go component with sandwiches, salads, pastries and coffee.
A modern Indian restaurant-supper club from Toronto is crossing the border. Befikre will combine modern Indian food with cocktails, DJs, live entertainment and bottle service in a 220-seat, bi-level space.
Portland’s cult doughnut shop is finally coming to New York. There will be more than 35 varieties, a full vegan lineup and hours that run from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. Because there is no wrong time for a doughnut. It’s 9am somewhere.
The Hoboken bakery famous for its enormous, pillowy cinnamon rolls is coming to Manhattan. Expect “cinnies,” cookies, s’mores bars, brownies, coffee and matcha.
In Tune Hospitality is opening Koakuma, a Japanese restaurant and cocktail bar combining sushi and cooked dishes with a distinctly New York sensibility.
The room will have velvet booths, intimate lighting and a decidedly date-night feel.
Just in time for football comes Flanker, a festive Seaport sports bar serving with burgers, wings, nachos, seafood, steaks, brunch, 50 beers, and a 34-seat bar surrounded by TVs.
Hidden Boot Saloon, a Western-themed bar, is planned upstairs for spring.
San Francisco’s Bun Mee is coming east for its first location outside the Bay Area.
The menu includes creative bánh mì, salads, bowls, garlic fries and specialty Vietnamese coffee drinks.
The Michelin-recommended See No Evil Pizza is coming out of the subway. The new See No Evil Slice will serve 20-inch thin-crust pies alongside Calabrian chili-honey wings, Sicilian pigs in a blanket and seasonal arancini.