Headliner
The Nines
Acme, the NoHo hot spot, is mostly history. Its underground bar and lounge remains in business, but the ground-floor restaurant has a new name and style. It is now something that has been on the restaurateur Jon Neidich’s wish list for years: a classy supper club, a throwback to high-end New York and lobby bars in grand hotels. (Mr. Neidich is running the project in the portfolio of his Golden Age Hospitality, which also includes Le Crocodile, Bar Blondeau and the Happiest Hour.) “Acme was closed for 14 months due to the pandemic, it had a good run and when we signed a new lease I decided to change it into something different,” he said. Sumptuously done in scarlet and swathed in corduroy, it has a small bar and lounge at the entrance. Then, behind a lush curtain is the main dining room with another bar, seating for 70 and a piano. The chef is Nicole Gajadhar from Saxon & Parole and the chef John Fraser’s restaurants. Her menu is luxurious, featuring oysters, caviar service, tuna tartare, foie gras, potato with caviar, gnudi with truffles, a club sandwich and a burger. The beverage director, Ashley Santoro from the Standard hotels, has assembled a list of classic cocktails, including a few nonalcoholic choices. The name is a reference to the address and the phrase describing fancy dress. (Opens Friday)
9 Great Jones Street (Lafayette Street), 212-421-5575, ninesnyc.com.
Opening
Bar Cicchetti
Italian food reigns at this restaurant and lounge by Fabio Viviani, the Italian celebrity chef and prolific restaurateur. Installed on the ground floor of the new Motto Chelsea hotel, with an upstairs lounge area, it was designed with elegant materials like brass and velvet. The restaurant serves dishes like fried burrata with roasted garlic, octopus with celery salad, spaghetti alla chitarra with clams, and Roman-style pizza topped with n’duja, eggplant and smoked mozzarella.
Motto Chelsea, 113 West 24th Street, 646-930-2317, barcicchettinyc.com.
Azulé Cantina
This counter-service taco spot comes from Southern California, where the parent company, K2, established Azulé Taqueria in four locations. The New York version maintains the beachfront California vibe but expands its offerings beyond tacos, burritos and nacho bowls with ahi tostada, crab cocktail, a raw bar and a full liquor bar. Two more Manhattan locations are in the works, one of them at 1385 Broadway (38th Street).
31 West 52nd Street, 646-360-4001, azulecantina.com.
Sei Less
A group of partners with experience at such places as Jue Lan Club, Philippe Chow, Delmonico’s, Harbor New York City and Dream Hospitality have opened this sprawling 350-seat destination for pan-Asian fare. It’s hidden behind a garment district mural, giving it the secretive air of a speakeasy. Chinese dishes dominate the menu, with dumplings, spring rolls, satays (à la Philippe Chow), lo mein, fried rice and won-ton soup. Sweet-and-sour chicken, rock shrimp tempura, Dover sole in lobster sauce, and a 20-ounce dry-aged Delmonico rib-eye steak with a surf-and-turf option are also on the menu.
156 West 38th Street, 212-586-2675, seiless.com.
Felice Montague
The eighth location in the growing Felice group of Tuscan-style restaurants, and the second in Brooklyn, has opened in a 1930s Art Deco building. New to this menu are baked pastas.
84 Montague Street (Hicks Street), Brooklyn Heights, 718-475-9877, felicenyc.com.
Sally Can Wait
This new Lower East Side bar and lounge with a Miami atmosphere serves tropical drinks, like the Miami Vice, a mash-up between a piña colada and a strawberry daiquiri, and the Love Comes First with coconut, banana, citrus, rum and sherry. The food melds Jewish (grilled mahi-mahi Reuben sandwich, latkes) and Caribbean (chicharrón tacos, yuca fries, Cuban sandwich).
252 Broome Street (Ludlow Street), 646-844-0228, sallycanwait.com.
Lodi
Ignacio Mattos extended the hours of his all-day Rockefeller Center restaurant to 9:30 p.m. (7 p.m. on Sundays). It will now serve dinner and feature a bar program.
1 Rockefeller Plaza (49th Street), 212-597-2735, lodinyc.com.
Sunday in Brooklyn/The Seaport
The all-day Italian restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been under renovation, mainly in the kitchen, and will reopen on Wednesday. In the meantime, it is running a pop-up in the Seaport District, starting late last week, for at least three months but possibly until the end of the year. “It’s a way to keep the staff working while we were renovating, and it also connects us to another neighborhood,” said Adam Landsman, an owner.
19 Fulton Street (Front Street), 917-397-1638, sundayinbrooklyn.com.
Nina’s Great Burrito Bar
The space at 522 Columbus Avenue (85th Street) has housed a revolving door of restaurants. After a fairly long run as Firehouse Tavern, a sports bar that closed about five years ago, it became a succession of Korean, Japanese, barbecue and burger spots. Now it’s Nina’s Great Burrito, a Mexican restaurant that was on Amsterdam Avenue nearby from 1994 to 2020. When it lost its lease, Nina Flores, who is from Oaxaca, and her family teamed up with the space’s owner, Jeremy Wladis, to use his kitchen for orders to go. It has reopened there, with seating for more than 100 indoors and out. The menu is lengthy, featuring tacos, sopas, enchiladas, tostadas, burritos and larger dishes like cochinita pibil, and the tortillas are handmade.
522 Columbus Avenue (85th Street), 212-724-5151, ninasgreatburritobar.com.
Eleven Madison Park
Last week, the restaurant announced that service would no longer be included in the price of dinner, a practice it followed for years. The owners cited rising operating costs, adding that the “priority is to find ways to support our team.” They came to realize, they said, that the service-included system “does not positively provide for anyone in this new normal.” The price of dinner will not change; it’s $335 in the dining room, $175 in the bar-lounge, gratuity not included. According to a news release, guests will “have the option to add a gratuity for their experience.”
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