The corner of Grand Street and West Broadway has its lights on again. For 31 years, 59 Grand was Lucky Strike, Keith McNally's bistro, which opened in 1989 and closed in April 2020 in the first weeks of the pandemic. The next restaurant in the room, Straker's, opened on Saturday, October 10, 2026.
Two other fall openings in SoHo arrived the same way, in rooms neighbors already knew. Little Prince on Prince Street is now ROMY, and Her Name Was Carmen on Broome Street is now Bar Leone. The difference between them is who did the rebuilding. At 199 Prince and 527 Broome, the owner who ran the old restaurant tore it out and started over. At 59 Grand, it took an operator from London, a lease that took about six months to negotiate, and a build that ran a year late.
Four rooms, four handoffs
| Address | Was | Is now | Who made the change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 199 Prince Street | Little Prince, opened April 2013 | ROMY, steakhouse | Cobi Levy, who also ran Little Prince |
| 527 Broome Street | Her Name Was Carmen, opened 2018 | Bar Leone, two-level martini lounge | Andres Diaz, who also ran Carmen |
| 59 Grand Street | Lucky Strike, 1989 to 2020 | Straker's | Thomas Straker, a London chef |
| 295 Lafayette Street | REI flagship, 2011 to July 2026 | Leased to Gentle Monster | IICOMBINED, Gentle Monster's parent |
In two of the four rows, the operator who ran the old room also made the change.
The owners who started over in their own rooms
Time Out reported that restaurateur Cobi Levy was turning his former Little Prince into ROMY, which opened in late September. Little Prince had been a small French restaurant on the block of Prince between MacDougal and Sullivan since April 2013. ROMY keeps the address but changes almost everything else. Designer Rafael de Cárdenas redid the room in oxblood and black lacquer, with burled wood, dark marble, bronze and artwork by George Condo. Chef Lucrezia Stella, who cooked in her family's restaurants in Rome and in a Michelin-starred kitchen on the Amalfi Coast, runs the menu. Levy's other restaurants include Lola Taverna and Cucina Alba.
The menu is a steakhouse with a lot of range. Time Out lists a 12-ounce Niman Ranch New York strip au poivre, a 20-ounce Westholme Farms Wagyu ribeye and a dry-aged Snake River Farms Wagyu porterhouse. If you don't want steak, there are halibut with blood orange, lobster with sage-lemon butter, and bucatini with San Marzano tomatoes. Kaluga caviar service costs $150 and comes with onion-chive dip and housemade potato chips. Miroo Kim, formerly of Atomix, runs the cocktails. Adam Waddell of Eleven Madison Park and Spencer Choi-Schagrin of Jean-Georges lead the wine program. ROMY's Resy listing describes a 50-seat room open from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.
On Broome Street, Andres Diaz made the same move. He opened Her Name Was Carmen, a Latin American seafood restaurant and lounge, in 2018. When he found a concept he wanted, the best room for it was the one he already had. He explained his reasoning to WWD:
"I learned this from big names in the industry like André Balazs and Ian Schrager: They always say, you have to grow up or evolve with your clientele."
The result is Bar Leone, 4,800 square feet on two levels at the corner of Watts Street, which Eater NY reported opened on September 10. Upstairs is a midcentury martini lounge in amber and mustard tones. Its martinis go beyond gin and vodka to mezcal, sotol and tequila. Downstairs is a later-'70s, early-'80s room built around Italian disco. Hoodline listed a $45 caviar martini made with Seventy One Gin or Beluga Gold Line vodka, a $45 Beluga caviar bump with a vodka shot, and $135 caviar service. Sommelier Yuval Bar-Kokhba, who ran the wine program at Carmen, wrote the wine list here too, so this is one more thing that carried over from the old room.
The name may confuse out-of-town guests. Bar Leone in Hong Kong, opened by bartender Lorenzo Antinori in 2023, was named the World's Best Bar in 2025. Diaz's Bar Leone has no connection to it.
The room that needed an outsider
At 59 Grand, nobody was left to rebuild from the inside. Lucky Strike closed in April 2020. In his interview with Eater NY, Thomas Straker said the deal took about six months and that he signed the lease in April of last year, which was 2025. That means more than five years passed between the last Lucky Strike service and the first lease signature for its replacement. From there it took another 18 months to open. Straker told Eater the build ran "12 months delayed and about $2 million over budget." The work included removing the old kitchen and putting in an open kitchen and an open bar.
The two rebuilds on Prince and Broome went the other way. Each owner already had the lease, the room and the neighborhood's attention. Diaz worked on Bar Leone for two years, according to Hoodline, but he never had to win the room.
What opened at 59 Grand is a copy of Straker's London restaurant, with local ingredients swapped in. Straker told Eater the menu structure would stay "pretty much the same, almost unchanged." He planned to use striped bass and Maine lobster in place of British fish, and to source from Connecticut dairy farms. The mussel flatbread, made in London with a 48-hour cold-ferment dough and chile butter, is the one dish he said was definitely coming over. He hired the kitchen locally, and the chef is Luka Coyne. Post Company did the interiors, with nods to Lucky Strike.
The Infatuation's October 22 review called it "a loud, loose, white-tablecloth scene." It singled out langoustines with gremolata, agnolotti in burnt tomato butter, the mussel flatbread and a butter-soaked side of spinach, and suggested sitting at the counter facing the kitchen.
The same pattern on Lafayette Street
The retail version of this story is at the Puck Building. REI ran its New York flagship at 295 Lafayette from 2011 until July 2026. In October, The Real Deal reported that South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster had leased 28,500 square feet there across three levels. Gentle Monster already has a SoHo flagship at 70 Wooster Street, which it redesigned in September. The Real Deal said it was unclear whether the brand would move there or run both stores.
The market context in the same report helps explain why these rooms get filled. On SoHo's Broadway corridor, two blocks west of the Puck Building, vacancy was 9% in the second quarter of 2026, with average asking rent of $393 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The Real Deal described retail vacancy in Manhattan's major corridors as being at a historic low. At those rents, an operator who already holds a good room has a strong reason to rebuild it instead of giving it up. That is the choice Levy and Diaz made.
Getting into each room
- Straker's, 59 Grand Street at West Broadway. Reservations go live on Resy two weeks out at midnight. Walk-ins are accepted, but The Infatuation recommends lining up before the 5 p.m. opening.
- ROMY, 199 Prince Street. Book on Resy. The listing shows service from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. in a 50-seat room.
- Bar Leone, 527 Broome Street at Watts. It opened Wednesday through Saturday from 6 p.m. Eater described that schedule as a starting point, so check the bar's website before you go.
- Gentle Monster, 295 Lafayette Street. The lease covers the former REI floors. The brand's existing store is at 70 Wooster Street.
The fall's other newcomers
A handful of SoHo openings this fall started fresh, mostly at smaller sizes and lower prices. On Spring Street, ÓOL opened September 9 at 178 Spring. Founder Ilana Gutierrez sells single-origin cacao from Ecuador, Colombia and Belize, and Breads Bakery makes the pastries. A few doors west, at 195 Spring at Sullivan, chef Salvo Lo Castro opened La Salumeria Soho on September 25 next to his restaurant Casasalvo. It sells $15 Italian sandwiches and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
At 32 Grand Street at Thompson, chef Nicholas Poulmentis opened his first solo restaurant, Kythira, on September 21. The Greek menu leans on seafood, with dishes like stuffed calamari and ceviche. Its website lists dinner from 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 3 p.m. on Sundays, and a pre-theater menu from 4 to 6 p.m. on weekdays. On Lafayette, a few doors south of the Puck Building, Rye by Martin Auer opened September 10 at 285 Lafayette. The Austrian baker sells rye loaves for $60 each.
The same tradeoffs apply to SoHo apartments, especially lofts in older buildings: rebuilding a space you already hold costs time and money, and a room that sits empty takes a long time to fill. If you're weighing whether to renovate your SoHo loft or sell it, Kobi Lahav can walk you through what each path costs on your block. Contact Kobi.
