Here Are 16 More Fall Openings We’re Watching

Everything is still under wraps at Manuela, which is moving into Soho. Photo: Jeremy Liebman

Welcome to Grub Street’s 2024 Fall Restaurant Preview. All week, we’re diving into the upcoming openings we’re most excited about.

We’ve spent this week highlighting the upcoming restaurants (and a bakery!) we’re most excited about: a Marlow trattoria, the ultimate West Village neighborhood spot, Kellogg’s Diner 2.0, and more. This is, however, an unusually busy opening season, and there are so many spots to mention. Here is a lightning-round edition of even more places — presented in no particular order — that we’re also very much looking forward to this fall. We’ve linked to websites where available but opted not to include any kind of opening timelines here since, with delays being what they are in the world of New York hospitality (inevitable), the projections tend to be, at best, moving targets.

Cafe Zaffri will be a Levantine spot from the Raf’s team inside the new Twenty Two hotel (16 E. 16th St.). Clemente Bar is Daniel Humm’s cocktail-bar collab with painter Francesco Clemente above Eleven Madison Park. What do plant-based bar bites look like? (11 Madison Ave.). The excellently named Bananas will specialize in Asian American cooking from vets of Blue Ribbon and BondSt, with sake flights and miso Caesars (174 First Ave.). The also-excellently named Pasta Night is a “fine casual,” full-in Italian expansion from Ciao, Gloria owner Renato Poliafito (575 Vanderbilt Ave., Prospect Heights). Salt & Straw, the West Coast ice-cream favorite, should also open its East Coast expansion, at last, with not one but two outposts. (540 Hudson St. and 360 Amsterdam Ave.). Manuela will mark the return of an art-scene restaurant to Soho (130 Prince St., at Wooster St.), while the chef Michael White will return to the world of midtown power dining at Santi, a seafood-heavy Italian ristorante (520 Madison Ave.). Speaking of empire-building chefs, Sal Tang’s is the latest edition to Sal Lamboglia’s quickly growing collection of spots in Brooklyn. For this one, he and Wilson Tang have linked up to build a Cantonese American neighborhood joint (521 Hicks St., Cobble Hill).

What else? At Cactus Wren, the wine bar genre gets a southwestern slant, care of the folks from 63 Clinton (98 Rivington St.). At the Otter, Alex Stupak will do seafood in a new Soho hotel called the Manner, with the cocktail bar Sloane’s upstairs (58 Thompson St.). Brass is the Contra guys’ latest project. We’re having trouble keeping track of everything they’re opening these days, but this will be a French fine-dining sister to their Tusk Bar inside the Evelyn Hotel (7 E. 27th St.). Remember a few entries ago, when we were talking about great names? Here’s one more: Smithereens will be elevated New England seafood from the former chef de cuisine of Claud (414 E. 9th St.). Crane Club is the long-anticipated Tao team-up with Jeff Katz and chef Melissa Rodriguez — a live-fire megarestaurant in the old Del Posto space (85 Tenth Ave.). Pitt’s will be where Agi’s Counter owner Jeremy Salamon evokes “eclectic” early-aughts New York dining in the onetime home of the Fort Defiance relocation (347 Van Brunt St., Red Hook). And finally, Daniel Boulud, arguably the city’s most prolific restaurateur of late, will keep tending to his own empire with La Tête d’Or, a French steakhouse in the One Madison development (23 E. 22nd St.).