Guess who’s back? (Guess who was never truly gone?) It’s me, Nikita Richardson! All summer long, we brought you mini dining guides from our reporters and editors across the U.S., and I hope you were able to incorporate our recommendations into your present or future travel plans. Alas, summer has come to an end, but our restaurant coverage is only ramping up. Every Thursday, Luke Fortney and Becky Hughes will continue to bring you the New York City dining recommendations you crave. On Tuesdays, I’ll play host as we cover all things restaurants from openings and weekly reviews from our critics, Tejal Rao and Ligaya Mishan, to dining-centric stories and videos from our reporters, trend spotting, etc. It’s going to be a bit of an experiment, but it’s going to be fun, too. And you’ll still be the most in-the-know among your restaurant-obsessed friends, I promise.
The fall restaurant preview is dead. Long live the fall restaurant preview.For decades now, Florence Fabricant has faithfully written the annual fall restaurant preview, laying out a road map for our end-of-the-year dining plans. But she recently pointed out that unlike the Met Opera or prime-time television, restaurant openings haven’t been tied to a particular season for quite a while. “Getting the gas turned on and the new chairs delivered can stretch the timeline by months,” she writes in our not-quite-a-fall-preview fall preview, out today. “So the sensible move is to open when everything is ready, at any time, turning reliable fall (or winter, or spring) predictions into a game of chance.” Look no further than the long-awaited reopening of Babbo under the chef Mark Ladner and the restaurateur Stephen Starr: Rumor in the restaurant-verse was that it would reopen in September. Now it’s looking more like October, though no word on which of the 31 days it’ll be. Babbo 2.0 led Grub Street’s dateless 2025 restaurant preview. Only seven out of the 23 restaurants on Eater’s list of fall openings have specific dates, and it’s the same story with the Infatuation. So, maybe it’s time to retire the fall restaurant preview and go back to the drawing board? Accordingly, our preview is more of a Q&A with Florence, Becky and Luke (with rough dates, we’re not monsters) about how these new restaurants will fit into our rich dining landscape. And here, on Tuesdays, we’ll be sure to let you know when those suggestions of opening dates become solid fact. Though I personally live by the time-honored marination code: Try not to go right when a place opens. Give restaurants four to six weeks to marinate and find their footing. Read our not-quite-a-fall-preview fall preview →
THE RESTAURANT REVIEW AlineaIt’s not unusual for our critics to re-review restaurants and ask, “Does this restaurant still hold up?” (See: Peter Luger, Per Se and the French Laundry, Le Bernardin.) But that’s not quite the case with Ligaya Mishan’s review this week, which is The Times’s first-ever review of Alinea, the 20-year-old molecular gastronomy restaurant in Chicago, and the last one standing among the El Bullis and WD-50s of the world. Instead, Ligaya asks, “Can Grant Achatz keep the magic alive after 20 years?” Or has the air gone out of the world’s most famous edible balloon? Read the review → THE FINAL COUNT 738,459The number of $23 Honey Deuces cocktails sold at this year’s U.S. Open, according to a press alert I received yesterday from the United States Tennis Association. That adds up to $16.9 million in sales and nearly 200,000 more sold than the year before. But shout out to the real heroes of the Open’s food and beverage team: the workers at Baldor Specialty Foods who scoop each honeydew melon ball by hand. OPENING OF THE (LAST) WEEK 86 Bedford Street Gets Un-86’dOK, technically it opened last week, but I can’t imagine a world in which I’m letting the opening of the Eighty Six pass me by. The latest project from Catch Hospitality (of Corner Store and Catch fame) has taken over 86 Bedford Street, the storied Greenwich Village space that once housed Chumley’s and the short-lived Frog Club. (Were we ever so young?) The theme: steakhouse. If you’re reading this, it’s already too late to get in; with reservations available only up to seven days in advance, the Eighty Six hit Resy Zero almost immediately. You might consider trying to walk in but be sure you’re sporting “smart elegant attire” as “any guest who does not appear sufficiently well-presented may be refused entry.” ON THE JOB At the Barclays Center
In the latest episode of “On the Job,” Priya Krishna goes behind the scenes at the Barclays Center to follow the two workers and longtime friends charged with making popcorn for 15,000-plus New York Liberty fans. Give it a watch and we’ll catch you again on Thursday. Watch the video → Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note at here. Follow NYT Food on TikTok and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
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