SoHo This Fall: The New Tables Were First Set Somewhere Else

"We're going to use our own British butter at the restaurant," Thomas Straker told Eater New York shortly before Straker's opened at 59 Grand Street on Saturday, October 10. In the same interview, he said he would serve striped bass in place of sea bass, perhaps Maine lobster, and dairy from farms he had visited in Connecticut.

So the butter crossed the Atlantic and the fish comes from this coast. A London chef, an Austrian baker, a Mexico City founder, a Lima chef and a Greek chef all opened within a few blocks of each other between early September and late October. Each kept something from home unchanged and left much of the menu, the staff and often the room to New York.

On Grand Street, the menu stayed and the staff did not

Straker's took over the former Lucky Strike space at the corner of Grand Street and West Broadway. Straker said the menu structure from London would remain "pretty much the same, almost unchanged." The staff is local. He told Eater the team was hired in New York, with a few people from London in support roles for the opening. The chef is Luka Coyne, an Australian.

He also explained to Eater why he picked New York over a second London address:

"People live outside of their apartments in New York... whereas in London there's a lot more eating at home."

He was born in Washington, D.C., and holds a U.S. passport, which he described as one he would "either use or lose." According to the interview, the lease was signed in April of last year, and the buildout ran 12 months late and roughly $2 million over budget. The interiors are by Post Company and include nods to Lucky Strike.

The dish he brought over unchanged is a hot bread-and-butter course, a mussel flatbread made on 48-hour cold-ferment dough, baked in the wood oven with chile butter built from the mussel stock. The wine list pours Krug by the glass and includes an English sparkling wine. Straker's serves dinner every night from 5 to 11 p.m. and takes reservations.

On Lafayette, the flour is still milled in Austria

Rye by Martin Auer, which opened September 10 at 285 Lafayette Street on the corner of Jersey Street, takes the idea further. Auer is an established baker in Austria. The flour is milled there, and no wheat goes into the bread. The bakery sells only rye. A full loaf costs $60, and the counter also offers slices with toppings such as salmon roe or butter and chives.

For a first visit, smaller portions are available. The Infatuation's review called the bread "dense, tangy, and so moist it sticks to your fingers," and listed a quarter-loaf at $15 and an open-faced PB&J at $6. The showroom also sells lifestyle goods, including a limited-edition wooden bread container.

What came from home, what New York supplies

Set side by side, the six openings line up like this:

Spring Street, from cacao to anticuchos

Three of the six are on Spring Street, and they cover very different parts of the day.

ÓOL opened on September 9 at 178 Spring, near Thompson Street. Gutierrez is from Mexico City. The shop serves single-origin cacao from Ecuador, Colombia and Belize, made with milk or water and flavored with spiced syrups such as chile or ginger. Pastries made with the same cacao come from Breads Bakery, a New York chain: a cacao swirl, a cacao chop cookie and a cacao croissant. The space has two floors, and tastings and workshops are planned. What Now New York lists hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.

La Salumeria Soho is a block west at 195 Spring Street, on the corner of Sullivan. Lo Castro opened Casasalvo next door in the summer of 2025, and he added the sandwich shop on September 25. Sandwiches are $15, and the shop also offers Italian wine, aperitivi and cheese tastings, daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Cholapink opened at 32 Spring Street on Wednesday, October 28. It is a partnership between Daddy Yankee and Jaime Pesaque, the chef behind Mayta in Lima. What Now New York reports the menu centers on anticuchos in chicken, beef, pork belly, fish and a vegan mushroom version, served with ceviche and chaufa.

Kythira is the southern anchor at 32 Grand Street, on the corner of Thompson. It is Poulmentis's first solo restaurant, and the menu leans on seafood: ceviche, oysters, stuffed calamari, goat cheese gnocchi, lamb chops and a vegetarian moussaka. There is a Mediterranean brunch as well. The restaurant's own dinner menu adds black truffle tarama and filet mignon pita souvlakia. Dinner starts at 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and at 3 p.m. on Sunday.

In the familiar rooms, the kitchen and the music come from Italy

Two openings moved into rooms SoHo already knew. In both, the cooking or the sound comes from Italy.

Time Out New York reported that restaurateur Cobi Levy turned his former Little Prince at 199 Prince Street into ROMY, a small steakhouse that opened in late September. The designer Rafael de Cárdenas redid the room in oxblood and black lacquer and hung artwork by George Condo. The chef, Lucrezia Stella, grew up in her family's restaurants in Rome and later cooked in a Michelin-starred kitchen on the Amalfi Coast. She serves Kaluga caviar with onion-chive dip and house-made potato chips for $150, along with a 20-ounce Westholme Wagyu ribeye. Cocktails are by Miroo Kim, formerly of Atomix. Adam Waddell of Eleven Madison Park and Spencer Choi-Schagrin of Jean-Georges run the wine program. ROMY's Resy page lists service from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., takes reservations and notes there is no bar seating.

Bar Leone opened on September 10 at 527 Broome Street, on the corner of Watts, in the 4,800-square-foot space that used to be Her Name Was Carmen. The same restaurateur, Andres Diaz, runs both. Upstairs is a midcentury lounge with a rotating art gallery. Downstairs is an Italian disco in rouge tones. Italian-born DJ Luigi Ambrosi plays everything from Neapolitan jazz to funk. The wine list leans toward Champagne and Franciacorta. Bar Leone opens at 6 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.

Good Company opened on October 8 at 343 West Broadway. It comes from the team behind Yesterday's, with chef Robert Sieber, an alum of Jungsik and The Surf Lodge. It is a two-level bar and restaurant serving wagyu French-dip sliders and the Good Burger, open Tuesday through Sunday with reservations on Resy.

On Greene Street, a gallery moves in and a Tokyo artist gets a first U.S. show

In early September, Garth Greenan Gallery left 545 West 20th Street in Chelsea for two spaces facing each other at 10 and 25 Greene Street. Both are in landmarked cast-iron buildings. Together they give the gallery more than 4,000 square feet of naturally lit, street-level space, about three times its old footprint, and the move coincided with the gallery's fifteenth anniversary. The gallery's announcement linked the move to SoHo's place in the history of American postwar art.

On Saturday, November 7, the gallery opens two shows, both running through December 19. At 25 Greene, Serial Cereal presents work by Ester Partegàs. At 10 Greene, The Monument of Lips is the first solo exhibition in the United States for Sadao Hasegawa, who lived from 1945 to 1999, a self-taught Japanese artist known for drawings and paintings made for Tokyo magazines in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Peter Kelly organized the show.

The next two weeks, by date

1. Friday, November 6, 7 to 9 p.m. A Skip the Small Talk conversation night for people in their twenties, at Bibliotheque NYC, 54 Mercer Street. Tickets required.
2. Saturday, November 7. Both Garth Greenan exhibitions open on Greene Street.
3. Sunday, November 8, doors at 5:45 p.m. Sundays on Broadway at WeisAcres, 537 Broadway, with Jonathan Matthews-Guzman, Nailah Murray, Quiet Ambassador and Sakura Shimada. The suggested donation of $5 to $20 goes to the performers.
4. Friday, November 13, 7 to 9 p.m. An LGBTQIA+ Skip the Small Talk night, open to all ages, back at Bibliotheque.

These dates line up easily with the new openings. A Saturday could start with a cacao croissant at ÓOL when it opens at 8 a.m., continue with the openings on Greene Street, and end at the 5 p.m. seating at Straker's for the mussel flatbread.

If you're weighing a SoHo address and want to know which of these new places sits on which block, our multilingual advisors at BARNES New York can walk the neighborhood with you, whether you're starting in London, Paris or across town. Schedule a private consultation and we'll share the restaurants and galleries we'd book first.