Opening a restaurant takes vision, but also money, patience and luck, especially in New York, where the competition is fierce and simple details like getting a gas hookup can become ordeals. Experienced chefs and restaurateurs are better at it, and this fall they’ll be the ones setting most of the tempting new tables.
Many of the new places I’m looking forward to most eagerly will have women running their kitchens, some with familiar names, others worth discovering, and all with admirable track records.
The one feature that will be absent almost everywhere is tablecloths.
The city has raw bars to spare, but Canal Street Oysters, from the seasoned restaurateurs Anthony and Tom Martignetti, will be a blockbuster, in a Beaux-Arts building with seating for 200, including 30 at the central limestone bar. Heading the kitchen will be Charlene Santiago, who was at the John Dory Oyster Bar and Reynard. The array of shellfish, raw and cooked, may include gooseneck barnacles but no lobsters. There’s a paella, and sandwiches like cod banh mi, along with beers galore and natural wines, practically a requirement for new restaurants this year.
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At 232 Bleecker, on Father Demo Square in the West Village, the executive chef will be Suzanne Cupps, who is leaving Untitled at the Whitney, where she was the first woman to be executive chef in a Danny Meyer restaurant. She will have a six-foot wood-burning oven facing a chef’s counter. An upstate farm owned by Dig Food Group, the restaurant’s owner, will supply fresh produce she will feature.
Nearby, Da Toscano will open in the former Perla space, a homecoming for the chef, Michael Toscano, who was Perla’s executive chef. Mr. Toscano has been in Charleston, S.C., where he is an owner of Le Farfalle. Here, he will take advantage of a wood-burning oven to turn out the hearty regional Italian fare I so admired at Perla; his wife, Caitlin Toscano, will manage the restaurant.
The chef Leah Cohen, who owns the Southeast Asian restaurant Pig and Khao with Benjamin Byruch, sees opportunity in the underserved neighborhood near Madison Square Garden. Their new Piggyback NYC will serve cha ca la Vong, the Vietnamese fish classic in a thicket of herbs; charcoal-smoked rib-eye; and Filipino lumpia spring rolls with Shanghai-style sweet chile sauce.
From South America, there will be the very personal interpretation of Brazilian cooking from Manoella Buffara, and two restaurants specializing in Nikkei cuisine, which blends Peruvian and Japanese fare in dishes like raw fish tiradito. Erik Ramirez of Llama Inn in Brooklyn will open Llama San, in a polished, pale-wood West Village setting with an open kitchen and a Peruvian wall-hanging. “Nikkei through a New York lens” is how he described food like spicy seafood stew with mirin and miso.
In Brooklyn, the Nikkei chef Ricardo Zarate will bring a spinoff of his Las Vegas restaurant, Once (pronounced on-SEH), to Carroll Gardens with dishes like Japanese eggplant ceviche, braised short ribs with pickled miso vegetables and grilled shrimp with yuzu.
Ryan Bartlow worked at Frenchette in New York and Alinea in Chicago, but his experience at Akelarre in San Sebastián, Spain, is what will drive the cooking at his much-delayed restaurant, Ernesto’s, on the Lower East Side. The restaurant will feature Basque-inspired food — whole baby fried mullet, fried cod cheeks, hake in green sauce, and braised rabbit with walnuts, Rioja-style — in an airy, glass-enclosed setting.
Channeling another part of Southern Europe, Cathédrale will offer French-Mediterranean pissaladière, bouillabaisse and rotisserie chicken chasseur by the executive chef Jason Hall, who cooked at Gotham Bar and Grill. The new place, in the Moxy East Village hotel, has a trim open kitchen glowing with polished copper, a zigzagging bar and a soaring arched dining room in a space that reaches deep underground. It’s the most dramatic-looking newcomer this season, with more than 300 seats; such grandeur is typical of the owners, Tao Group Hospitality. The restaurant’s name is meant in part to evoke the Fillmore East, the 1960s music hall nearby that was nicknamed the Church of Rock ‘n’ Roll. At Cathédrale, the Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi has installed an ethereal mesh sculpture titled “Fillmore” on the ceiling.
For French food, I’m also excited about the reopening of Le Veau d’Or, the vintage bauble that is being refreshed by Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson of Frenchette. Another favorite food group of mine, Middle Eastern fare will arrive with the opening of Shukette, the latest from Vicki Freeman, Marc Meyer and Chris Paraskevaides of Cookshop and Vic’s. Ayesha Nurdjaja, the chef and a partner, will make use of a charcoal grill.
Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar chain will establish its flagship in the former John Dory Oyster Bar, in the Ace Hotel New York. New items will include apple pie soft-serve with pie-dough crumble and a roll stuffed with eggplant Parm. The company will also move its cooking classes here from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And if I’m eager for the opening of the next Daily Provisions cafe from Union Square Hospitality Group, it’s because its crullers and an expanded dinner menu will be a welcome addition to my Upper West Side neighborhood.
When it comes to long experience, it’s hard to compete with Pastificio G. Di Martino, which has been making excellent dry pasta near Naples, Italy, since 1912. The company is opening a store, a pasta bar and restaurant in the former Green Table space in Chelsea Market.
Still, there are some genuine newcomers to watch, like Alessandra and Mario De Benedetti, the first-time restaurateurs opening Il Fiorista. They recently moved to New York from Northern Italy, where Ms. De Benedetti was a professor and her husband was in private equity, but both, now in their 50s, wanted a change of scene where they could work together. Theirs is a light-filled restaurant with a flower shop in the front that Ms. De Benedetti will run, with abundant edible flowers adorning Mediterranean food by the chef, Garrison Price, who was at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria and Cafe Clover.
Opening in the coming week:
Canal Street Oysters 380 Canal Street (West Broadway), 646-448-4032, Sept. 9.
Llama San 359 Avenue of the Americas (Washington Place), 646-490-4422, llamasannyc.com. Sept. 5.
Opening later:
(All dates are subject to change)
Cathédrale 112 East 11th Street, September.
232 Bleecker 232 Bleecker Street (Carmine Street), 232bleecker.com, October.
Daily Provisions 375 Amsterdam Avenue (78th Street), September; also 29 Bedford Street (Downing Street), November.
Da Toscano 24 Minetta Lane (Avenue of the Americas). November.
Di Martino Pasta Bar Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Avenue (15th Street), December.
Ernesto’s 259 East Broadway (Montgomery Street), late fall.
Il Fiorista 17 West 26th Street, 646-490-8240, ilfioristanyc.com, September.
Le Veau d’Or 129 East 60th Street, December.
Milk Bar 1196 Broadway (29th Street), October.
Once 315 Smith Street (Union Street), Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. October.
Piggyback NYC 140 West 30th Street, October.
Shukette 230 Ninth Avenue (24th Street), September.