Headliner
Lamia’s Fish Market
Forget the typical seagoing décor often found in fish restaurants: running lights, ropes and nets, and taxidermied sailfish. Lamia Funti has taken an over-the-top approach, in the style of Farallon in San Francisco, to her restaurant’s dining areas. There’s a glittering mermaid amid gilded fish in relief, mirrors that look like barnacles, octopus murals, glowing blue and gold accents, and a marble raw bar. The restaurant’s 175 seats are spread over several rooms on three levels, including a bar, the Octopus Room, a raw bar, the Grotto, the Boat Room and a private dining room. “It took us two years to build,” said Ms. Funti, who has worked at several New York restaurants, including Le Souk, the previous tenant in the space. She is married to Marcus Andrew, the owner of Le Souk and of the building. “I don’t have to worry about the landlord,” she said. The executive chef, Alan Vargas, who was at Scarpetta, Hakkasan and Masa, offers an extensive raw bar menu; appetizers like garlic chile shrimp, langoustines and red snapper taquitos; a few pastas; butterflied black bass; and fish by the pound that can be grilled or salt-baked. The same menu is served throughout.
47 Avenue B (East Fourth Street), 212-777-3650, lamiasfishmarketny.com.
Opening
La Cubana
Carl Ruiz, a television celebrity chef and restaurant consultant, is giving Cuban food another try in New York. Son Cubano, his Chelsea supper club and restaurant serving classics like arroz con pollo and ropa vieja, closed several years ago. With this new restaurant, the ropa vieja is back on a menu that features beef empanadas, several escabeches, fried chicken with Creole sauce, fried whole red snapper, and pork shoulder stewed with rice and plantains. The dining room’s plants give it a tropical feel. It has brick walls, baby-blue banquettes and wrought iron accents. Weekend brunches, starting this fall, will be served to a live music beat.
408 West 15th Street, 646-869-8873, lacubananewyork.com.
Ayada
The standout Thai restaurant in Elmhurst, Queens, is opening a branch in Chelsea Market. It will be a full-service 45-seat restaurant with food that’s family style, both in terms of service and dishes, with Eastern Thai sausage with vegetables, beef stew noodle soup, and sautéed sliced catfish with eggplant in spicy curry coconut sauce. Beer, wine and cocktails will also be poured. (Opens Thursday)
Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Avenue (15th Street), 212-645-9445, ayadathai.com.
Le Petit Rooster
Delayed but finally up and running, this French bistro from the chef Alex Tobar, who worked with José Andrés in Miami for many years, has the potential to enliven the dining scene in this Upper West Side neighborhood. In a former fancy food shop, the bistro has a bar up front, a stretch of open kitchen and a corridor of tables along a brick wall, with more seating in a back area. It’s in soft opening mode until Tuesday, so oysters, onion soup, steak tartare and rotisserie fish for two are not yet available. But there are classics to be had, like duck rillettes, frisée aux lardons, roast chicken, duck magret and filet mignon, along with novelties like a delicate carrot terrine, plump snails poached in a bag with black garlic and bone marrow butter, leeks with chorizo spices and smoked onion, and escabeche of razor clams. Beer, wine, cider and low-alcohol cocktails are on the drinks list.
491 Columbus Avenue (84th Street), 646-609-6009.
Looking Ahead
The Mermaid Inn
Danny Abrams, the owner of the Mermaid Inn (with Cindy Smith), and a partner in the Red Cat in Chelsea, now closed, will open a branch of Mermaid Inn in the Red Cat space this fall.
227 10th Avenue (24th Street).
The Garden at Water Mill
This new restaurant in the Hamptons will have a series of pop-ups from guest chefs. The Japanese restaurant Uchi in Austin, Texas, will be in residence Thursdays to Sundays from July 1 to 31, $225 per person. From July 17 to 31, Renzo Garibaldi of Osso, a butcher and restaurant in La Molina, Peru, will prepare charcuterie and Peruvian steaks aged 300 days, $145 per person; and from Aug. 1 to 15, Mitsuharu Tsumura of Maido in Lima, Peru, will prepare Nikkei food, $395 per person. The restaurant’s regular menu will also be available throughout the residencies.
755 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, N.Y., thegardenatwatermill.com/events.
The Deco
In early September, a ground-floor space that housed several fabric stores in a major fashion showroom building will be turned into this fancy food hall, done in blue glass with brass trim and shiny tilework. Doris Huang, the owner (with a silent partner), worked on the corporate side at Godiva Chocolatier, and considers a food hall a necessary amenity in the garment district. She has signed on well-established vendors, like Maman, which will open Mademoiselle by Maman and Papa Poule for rotisserie chicken; Little Tong Noodle Shop; Jeepney; El Atoradero; Beach Bistro 96 from Rockaway Beach; Mani in Pasta; Tipsy Scoop; and Huli Huli, with Hawaiian food. There will be a large central bar in the space.
231 West 39th Street.
Chefs on the Move
Jonathan Perez
Mr. Perez, who cooked at Balthazar, Petrossian and Kingside, is the new executive chef at Burke & Wills, an Australian restaurant on West 79th Street.
Daniela Soto-Innes
Ms. Soto-Innes, who is Enrique Olvera’s partner at Cosme and Atla in New York, was named 2019’s best female chef by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization, which will announce its complete results next week in Singapore. She joins an illustrious group that includes Dominique Crenn of San Francisco and Clare Smyth of London. At 28, Ms. Soto-Innes is the youngest chef to win the award. Jessica Préalpato, the executive pastry chef for Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée in Paris, has won the world’s best pastry chef award for 2019. The organization also revealed the restaurants ranked from 51 to 120. There are five from New York: Momofuku Ko at 76; Brooklyn Fare, 77; Estela, 80; Per Se, 115; and Atomix, 119. Saison in San Francisco was 70, and SingleThread in Healdsburg, Calif., came in at 71, for a total of seven in the United States on this part of the list.
