The New York Restaurant Openings Worth Fighting For A Reservation This Fall

Fall is when New York’s restaurant scene traditionally kicks back into high gear, and 2026 is delivering a particularly compelling crop of arrivals. Heavyweights Daniel Boulud and Daniel Humm are unveiling ambitious new projects; London chef Thomas Straker is making his stateside debut; Enrique Olvera is expanding the Cosme universe; and some of the city’s most interesting culinary talent is stepping out with deeply personal concepts of their own. From a 2,500-label wine destination and an intimate tasting counter to Korean barbecue, modern Greek cuisine and a new generation of New York nightlife, these are the openings worth having on your radar this fall.

Photo Credit: Jason Varney for Rockwell Group

Brasserie Boulud

Lincoln Square

Daniel Boulud is going big for fall. Brasserie Boulud takes over the combined former homes of Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud and Épicerie Boulud across from Lincoln Center, transforming more than 10,000 square feet into an expansive French brasserie.

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the restaurant brings Boulud’s polished approach to classic brasserie fare in a setting that includes a sprawling dining room, bar, private dining spaces and even a speakeasy. For a chef who has helped define fine dining in New York for decades, it represents both a homecoming and a reinvention—and one of fall’s biggest openings.

Humm

West Village

Daniel Humm is stepping outside the rarefied world of Eleven Madison Park with Humm, his first namesake restaurant, coming to 435 Hudson Street.

The approach here will be considerably more relaxed than EMP: entirely à la carte, Mediterranean-influenced and centered on pristine seasonal ingredients, with plates designed for sharing. That relative informality doesn’t mean Humm has abandoned spectacle. A wood-burning hearth anchors the dining room, while works by Rashid Johnson and a ceiling mural by Italian artist Francesco Clemente bring an artistic dimension to the space. Few openings this year come with expectations quite this high.

Straker’s

SoHo

London is coming to SoHo, and it’s bringing butter. British chef Thomas Straker makes his American restaurant debut with Straker’s at 59 Grand Street, taking over the former Lucky Strike space for his first restaurant outside the U.K.

Straker has built a devoted following around ingredient-driven modern British cooking—and, famously, his seemingly endless variations on butter. His Notting Hill restaurant has become one of London’s buzziest reservations, making the arrival of its New York sibling one of downtown’s most closely watched openings of the season.

Bar Cosme

NoHo

Enrique Olvera is taking the energy of Cosme and pushing it later into the night with Bar Cosme, opening in the former Atla space at 372 Lafayette Street.

The new concept places greater emphasis on cocktails and the bar experience while retaining the modern Mexican sensibility that made Cosme one of New York’s defining restaurants. Expect both prix-fixe and à la carte options, house-made tortillas, raw and lightly cooked dishes and a serious drinks program. Think of it less as a sequel to Cosme than its after-dark alter ego.

Calabash

West Village

Award-winning pastry chef Camari Mick steps into the spotlight with Calabash, her first restaurant, opening at 183 Christopher Street.

Mick, whose résumé includes The Musket Room and Raf’s, is drawing on the foodways of the African diaspora, with influences stretching from West Africa to the Caribbean. Alongside chef de cuisine Tajeh Porter, she is building a menu around dishes including suya steak with maduros and Trinidadian-style bake with sardines and chow-chow. The intimate 30-seat restaurant will also operate as an all-day café, with Mick’s breads and laminated pastries taking center stage in the morning.

Photo Credit: Giada Paoloni

Dante Elizabeth Street

NoLita

One of New York’s most celebrated cocktail names has returned to Elizabeth Street. Dante Elizabeth Street, at 210 Elizabeth Street, is a sprawling new restaurant and bar from owners Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson, designed by AvroKO.

The drinks that helped make Dante internationally famous are naturally part of the equation—Negronis, martinis and spritzes included—but this is far more than a cocktail bar. Italian cooking from a wood-fired oven gives the food equal billing, while the considerably larger space allows Dante to turn its signature aperitivo culture into a full evening affair.

Creola

Upper East Side

With just 12 seats, Creola is among the smallest openings on this list—and one of the most personal.

Chef Lana Lagomarsini, a Top Chef semifinalist, named the restaurant after her grandmother, who taught her to cook. Her five-course tasting menu explores the food of the Black diaspora, the American South and her own New York upbringing through dishes that are simultaneously nostalgic and inventive. An oxtail pâté en croûte riffs on the flavors of a Jamaican beef patty, while collard-green potlikker consommé arrives with trout and trout-fat-roasted cornbread. It is ambitious, intimate and unlike almost anything else opening uptown this season.

Mythily

Williamsburg

Chef Rasika Venkatesa turns her Top Chef momentum into something deeply personal with Mythily, her first permanent restaurant, at 129 Havemeyer Street.

The restaurant centers South Indian cooking, particularly the Tamil flavors and traditions that helped shape Venkatesa’s culinary identity, filtered through the perspective of a chef cooking in contemporary Brooklyn. In a fall packed with major names and splashy Manhattan openings, Mythily is one of the restaurants giving us a very good reason to cross the river.

Kythira NP

SoHo

Chef Nicholas Poulmentis goes solo with Kythira NP, bringing a personal, contemporary interpretation of Greek cuisine to 32 Grand Street in SoHo.

Named for the Greek island of Kythira, the restaurant puts Poulmentis’ own culinary point of view front and center after years spent building his reputation in New York kitchens. Rather than simply reproducing familiar Greek classics, Kythira promises a more modern expression of the cuisine—making it one of the more intriguing independent openings arriving downtown.

Bar CC

Meatpacking District

Caviar, cocktails and velvet walls: Bar CC isn’t exactly being subtle about its intentions.

The new sister concept to Crane Club comes from chef Melissa Rodriguez and restaurateur Jeffrey Katz in partnership with Tao Group Hospitality. Located at 85 Tenth Avenue, Bar CC brings a more intimate, drinks-driven counterpart to the restaurant next door, with a cocktail program overseen by talent from acclaimed Overstory. For nights when dinner is merely the beginning, this is one of fall’s addresses to know.

Photo Credit: Alex Staniloff

Amphora

Flatiron

For serious wine collectors, Amphora may be one of the most exciting arrivals of the season. Now open at 43 East 20th Street in the former Veritas space, the restaurant pairs chef Jack Logue’s seasonal cooking with an extraordinary cellar of more than 2,500 labels.

Logue, whose résumé includes Betony and The Lambs Club, offers three- and four-course menus alongside a tasting experience with wine pairings and an à la carte menu at the bar. Wine director Chris Miller has assembled a collection particularly strong in Burgundy, Champagne, Piedmont and the Northern Rhône, with names including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Coche-Dury, Raveneau and Rousseau. In other words, the wine isn’t an accessory here; it is very much the point.

Baekjeong Black

Koreatown

New York Korean barbecue institution Baekjeong returns after a two-year hiatus in a decidedly more ambitious form. Baekjeong Black, at 49 West 32nd Street, spans two floors of the Martinique New York and takes the familiar Korean barbecue experience firmly upscale.

Upstairs, diners choose from prime, dry-aged and wagyu cuts displayed in a butcher case inspired by Seoul’s Majang Meat Market before they hit the grill. Downstairs transforms in the evening into Yangban, a specialty cocktail bar. It’s bigger, sleeker and more luxurious than the Baekjeong New Yorkers remember.

FKA: Formerly Known As

East Village

The glory days of New York nightlife get a modern reboot at FKA: Formerly Known As, now open at 221 Second Avenue.

The team behind it has plenty of New York hospitality pedigree: Zak Snyder’s résumé includes Crew, Del Posto and Balthazar; Aram Sabet has worked with Arthur & Sons and Serendipity3; Kyle O’Brien brings experience from Hotel Chantelle and The Garret; and entrepreneur Emerson Taymor rounds out the group.

The concept deliberately mixes high and low, pairing a street-food-rooted menu with serious cocktails and distinctive wine and beer lists. More importantly, FKA is designed to feel like somewhere you go for the night, rather than somewhere you simply stop for dinner—a distinction the East Village has always understood particularly well.

The Astor

NoHo

Old New York gets a stylish new chapter inside The Public Theater with The Astor, which opened September 15 in the space formerly occupied by The Library.

The project brings together an impressive group of New York hospitality names, including chef Andrew Carmellini, Serge Becker and the team behind Joe’s Pub. The handsome, wood-paneled restaurant takes inspiration from classic New York taverns and supper clubs, with elevated tavern fare and classic cocktails to match. Its location makes it an obvious pre- and post-theater destination, but with Carmellini in the kitchen and Becker involved in the creative vision, The Astor is intended to be a destination in its own right.

Sushiro

Times Square

One of Japan’s biggest restaurant brands is betting big on New York. Sushiro will make its U.S. debut with an enormous three-level Times Square flagship at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street.

The roughly 9,000-square-foot restaurant brings the Japanese kaiten-sushi experience to Manhattan on a grand scale, combining conveyor-belt sushi and digital ordering with a menu that stretches far beyond nigiri and rolls. This is emphatically not another hushed, multi-hundred-dollar omakase counter—and that’s exactly the point. Sushiro has built a global following by making sushi fast, fun and approachable. Its arrival in Times Square could make one of Japan’s most familiar restaurant formats feel surprisingly novel in New York.

For more on the tables actually worth booking, browse Haute Living‘s running guide to the best spots in the cities we cover.