The Upper East Side's New Dining Rooms Come From Its Own Kitchens

Caterina Pepe moved to the United States in 2014 and spent the next six years as a pastry sous chef on the Upper East Side. In 2020 she left to open Cerasella, a bakery in Astoria. She sold it in 2025 and came back to the neighborhood where her American career started, and there she met Wilson Vera. Vera, who is from Ecuador, started as a dishwasher and worked his way up through busboy, waiter and manager to co-owner of Vespa on Second Avenue. Their restaurant, Pepe & Vera, is named for the two of them, and it is going into the former Hollybrook Lane space at 1712 First Avenue, near East 89th Street.

Most of this season's new sit-down rooms have a backstory like theirs. KALÓ on Lexington and Koakuma on Second Avenue both come from operators who already run restaurants on the Upper East Side. The newcomers from Madrid, Atlanta and New Jersey are opening places for froyo, fried chicken, coffee, cookies and flowers.

First Avenue near 89th, by way of Astoria

At Pepe & Vera, Pepe runs the kitchen and Vera runs the dining room. The menu is still being worked out, but Pepe told Patch the plans include tortellini in brodo and linguine with clams, along with vegetarian and vegan dishes and desserts. She started cooking with her mother and uncle when she was six, and her family works in restaurants in Italy and the United States.

The partners are repainting the old blue walls in beige and green, and adding artwork and a new bar. Vera spoke about the room in terms you would expect from someone who learned the trade on these blocks:

"Ambiance is number one for me, because when you go to a place and you feel comfortable, you want to stay there."

He told Patch that his years working in the neighborhood taught him what local diners want. The owners have said they are aiming for Thanksgiving week and that the date is tentative. They are taking their time with the space.

Lexington between 72nd and 73rd, from the Third Avenue team

KALÓ follows the same pattern from a larger operator. The 50-seat Greek restaurant at 1007 Lexington Avenue comes from the team behind Water & Wheat, the Italian restaurant with locations on the Upper East Side and in Midtown East. Water & Wheat's Upper East Side room, at 1379 Third Avenue, opened in 2023, according to West Side Rag. KALÓ's owner, Vasiliki Lampropoulou, also owns Koukla, an Astoria espresso bar known for Greek-inspired breakfast dishes. That makes two of the season's new dining rooms with roots in Astoria.

The space used to be María Mulata Restaurant & Bar. Executive chef and co-owner Konstantinos Moschos cooks on a wood-fired oven and an open grill, which handle the breads, seafood, meats and seasonal vegetables. The menu includes:

• Horiatiki Crudo, thinly sliced sea bream
• Short Rib Giouvetsi, slow-braised short rib with orzo and Graviera Naxou cheese
• Wood-Roasted Briam & Revithokeftedes Sifnou, seasonal vegetables with herbed falafel
• House-made mastiha marshmallows, toasted at the table and dipped in warm dark chocolate

ARCH Design did the dining room with custom woodwork, terracotta vessels, vintage artwork and real olive trees. Lampropoulou told Patch she wants to "create the kind of restaurant that becomes part of people's lives." KALÓ takes dinner reservations on OpenTable, where the listing also shows whole grilled fish and family-style menus. Friday and Saturday hours are listed as 4:00 to 10:30 p.m. Lunch and brunch are planned for later.

Second Avenue, from the owner of Uva and Nightly's

The third dining room comes from the neighborhood's most established operator of the three. Massimo Lusardi already runs Nightly's, Uva, Uva Next Door and Key and Heels on the Upper East Side, and his new project is Koakuma, a Japanese restaurant at 1492 Second Avenue that its own Instagram describes as "New York Japanese." The Infatuation put it on its list of fall openings and described a room with wrap-around velvet booths.

Pepe & Vera, KALÓ and Koakuma are all full-service restaurants, each run by a different kind of operator: a pastry chef and a former Second Avenue co-owner, the team that already runs a room on Third Avenue, and a restaurateur with four Upper East Side businesses.

The arrivals from elsewhere are counters

Since September, the businesses arriving from outside the neighborhood have mostly landed on First and Second Avenues. None of them is a dining room:

1. Coffee Project New York, 1219 First Avenue, opened September 20. It is the company's first Upper East Side shop. Chi Sum Ngai and Kaleena Teoh co-founded it in 2015.
2. Zaxbys, 1267 First Avenue, opened September 30. It is the first Manhattan location for the chain, which was founded in Atlanta in 1990.
3. Myka, 1547 Second Avenue, opened October 24. Natalia Morales and Javier Ezquerro founded the frozen yogurt brand in Madrid in 2023.
4. BloomBar Café et Fleurs, at 1226 Third Avenue, is a café and flower shop in one. Heleyne and Ronnie Tamir started BloomBar as a florist in Oakhurst, New Jersey. Patch reported that the Upper East Side shop would offer ceremonial-grade matcha, flavored cold foam, vegan soft-serve, salads and pastries, plus flowers and home goods.
5. Last Crumb, the cookie brand Derek Jaeger launched in 2020, has a location coming to 990 Lexington Avenue.

Each of these brands proved its format somewhere else before bringing it here, and each one is built around a counter. In the same months, everyone who opened a room built for a long dinner had already worked in the neighborhood.

Madison Avenue, in 2027

One more project fits neither group. The Tulipán Foundation is building a Hungarian cultural center at 1065 Madison Avenue, and its website says the new home opens in 2027. Tulipán Kitchen will be part of it, serving traditional and contemporary Hungarian food and hosting culinary events, demonstrations and talks about ingredients, techniques and traditions. In October, Patch reported wider programming in art, music, literature and conversation, with planned kitchen hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and until 10 p.m. on weekends. It will have its own dining room, built around a cultural institution.

Before dinner, on Museum Mile

Museum Mile has a full calendar through the rest of November, and it pairs easily with an early table on Lexington or First.

At the Frick, "Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500" opened October 15 and runs until January 18, 2027. The Guggenheim has two long-running shows on view: Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now, through January 10, 2027, and "Collection in Focus | Modern European Currents," which closes the same day.

Dated programs between now and Thanksgiving:

Late Shift on November 19 starts at 6:30 p.m. That evening you can see the Pop galleries and then book dinner from the wood-fired oven on Lexington, at the restaurant run by the team that already cooks on Third Avenue.

If you are deciding whether a building's location suits how you actually spend your evenings, which restaurants are close by is part of the answer. BARNES New York follows the Upper East Side block by block, from new dining rooms to the Museum Mile calendar. Schedule a private consultation with our multilingual New York advisors, and we will walk the avenues with you.