Where the New York Art World Eats

The art industry, which moves around the world according to a somewhat regular calendar of openings, fairs, and auctions, is loyal to its restaurants and watering holes. There is no real reason for dealers and collectors to return to the same hokey fondue spot in Basel every year, or the same mildewed dive bar on Miami Beach, but they do, driven perhaps by the promise of friendly faces and easy familiarity. There are memories in these places.

As I discussed on the Artnet News podcast The Art Angle with Artnet’s editor-in-chief, Andrew Russeth, fine art professionals wind up eating at a handful of very intentionally chosen places. Some do have good art on the walls, and some are even investment vehicles for art types, but many are unwitting destinations, effectively random.

Our conversation spanned restaurants that the art world has brought us to, from Seoul to Paris, but in putting together a handy Google Map, we focused on what took up the lion’s share of our discussion: Restaurants with ties to art in New York City. A disclaimer: It is by no means comprehensive, and it is largely subjective, grounded in our own circles, interests, and years on the ground in the industry.

Some selections are obvious. This year saw the opening of four restaurants attached to big-name art institutions in New York: Marcel (in the basement of Sotheby’s), Zoli (attached to Amant), Symone (MoMA PS1), and Oberon (New Museum). The city has also recently welcomed a handful of restaurants that are independent of any art space but that are known for their art collections (Humm in the West Village, Oriana in Little Italy) or their art ties (Cavalier, which is operated by artist Yasmin Kaytmaz and dealer Alex Adler).

Other selections are less obvious, like a gourmet grocery store positioned at the nexus of the Tribeca gallery scene, or an unassuming tavern where dealers on the Upper East Side can still get a burger for under $20. Save the map to your Google account, and next time you’re stranded after going to an opening, let Artnet News and Caper suggest a place around the corner.

This is one of the most beautiful rooms in New York, especially when you are watching darkness fall over the city from a comfy banquette with a $30-to-$50 “freezer martini” in hand. Everything glows, a Joan Mitchell painting is on the wall, and waiters are wheeling around absolutely enormous desserts for tables to share. It feels good to be at Sotheby’s in the basement of Marcel Breuer’s building. The luxe French food? Well, that is the weak point at this art-world clubhouse from the auction house and the design firm Roman and Williams. The prices are formidable ($176 for a whole Dover sole, $22 for a side of fries), and the execution is oddly wan. But you are here for other reasons. —Andrew Russeth

The recently expanded New Museum came with a splashy restaurant from the Oberon Group, Henry Rich’s restaurant company, whose portfolio includes Rhodora, Rucola, June, and Anaïs. The menu veers toward the approachable, but the design of Oberon is where the creativity lives: You approach through a silvery chute in Freeman Alley, and enter an OMA-designed room that looks like a spaceship made entirely of cork, lit by an interactive Ian Cheng piece behind the bar. Make sure to linger: The meal is capped off with a chocolate designed by Laurie Anderson. —Annie Armstrong

Because they opened within a few weeks of each other this past spring, Zoli, the restaurant at Lonti Ebers's Bushwick art complex Amant, is often compared to Marcel, the new restaurant at the Sotheby’s Breuer Building flagship. The comparison makes some sense, but stops abruptly at “restaurant connected to an art institution.” Whereas Marcel appeals to luxurious excess and a sweet tooth, Zoli finds its stride in subtle, cerebral dishes and challenging art. Take a bite of whatever fish chef Ned Baldwin sourced that week (tilefish, the last time I visited, though as I write this, I see sanddab on the menu) while gazing at Pierre Huyghe’s sludgy, post-nuclear fish tanks, the centerpiece of the dining room, with genetically modified noxious-green fish drifting within. (Tell me that pairing doesn’t provoke your palate!) The placement of Zoli at the contemporary art campus in Bushwick ensures some more foot traffic for Amant, which is well off the trodden path for art types. —A.A.

The restaurant space at MoMA PS1 has a reputation for exciting tenants. In recent memory, there was M. Wells Dinette, which occupied the cafe from 2012 to 2019 to critical acclaim, followed by the Greek-inspired Mina’s, helmed by Urs Fischer’s private chef, Mina Stone. Up next is DeVonn Charles Francis, who is bringing French-Caribbean cuisine to campus this fall. This is Francis’s first restaurant, and he arrives with experience running his own catering business, Yardy World, and previously managing the flowers at Ignacio Mattos’s late-lamented Flora Bar at the Breuer Building, back when it was the Met Breuer. Chef Aiden O’Neal, who ran M. Wells, has been advising Francis on how to approach the venue. “You have to just be conscious of the rhythm of the space,” Francis told me of his approach to taking over the restaurant. “At one time, people are coming in just because they want to have a coffee in the morning. Another time people are dancing at Warm Up and you’re serving them the best grilled watermelon salad and shrimp.” —A.A. 

If you’re interested in Zoli, but averse to crossing the river to Brooklyn, chef Ned Baldwin’s other restaurant (more of a neighborhood joint, serving burgers and roast chicken) is tucked two blocks from the West Side Highway, below Spring Street in Manhattan. Though it isn’t attached to a museum, it has some art world bona fides. A Joan Jonas drawing hangs prominently near the entrance, and the late, great Barbara Gladstone was an investor. I recommend having a roast chicken and a glass of ice-cold aquavit. —A.A.

If you’re a fan of the mural by Cecily Brown at Chez Nous, you should make a reservation now for a table at Cavalier, and request the back room. In that room is another photogenic restaurant mural, by the emerging artist Georgia Gardner Gray, who painted pedestrians moving through a crosswalk in brilliant, clashing colors. Cavalier serves Turkish-inspired food and is co-owned by four partners, including the artist Yasmin Kaytmaz (who also owns the popular bar the River, and Derby Cup Coffee, where artwork by Walter Robinson and Sanya Kantarovsky hangs) and the art dealer Alex Adler (Adler is Gardner-Gray’s cousin). I went on opening night and enjoyed the bean and chicory salad and the sumac chicken. There is also an impressive wine list. —A.A.

A visit to the Studio Museum in Harlem without a stop at Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster is like a meal without dessert. It’s a cinch for this list, as artworks by Sanford Biggers, Lauren Halsey, and Mark Leckey hang on the walls. The staff uniforms are works of art too, as Samuelsson commissions artist Hass Kwame to make a hand-painted apron for every employee, and so are the kitchen doors, with drawings by line cook Rafael Torres of some of the restaurant’s popular dishes like chicken and waffles and the smash burger. —A.A. 

Rashid Johnson is an investor in the new restaurant from the art-loving chef Daniel Humm. As with another of Humm’s ventures, Clemente Bar, Francesco Clemente painted the walls at this one too. (In fact, he even got up on the ceiling.)  This place is comparatively affordable next to Humm’s crown jewel, Eleven Madison Park. The space previously housed the hot spot En Brasserie, a favorite of Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Lou Reed, and many others. Humm’s takeover of the space didn’t come easily, as I reported for Caper earlier this year. When he took over the lease, En Brasserie’s owner, Reika Alexander, hid old cod around the restaurant to stink up the place before he turned over the key. —A.A.

The Tribeca gallery scene’s cafeteria. On any odd night, you will find artists, art handlers, gallery directors, and the like blowing off steam and gossiping over cheap martinis and burgers. The back room is still relatively affordable for a buy-out, so many up-and-comers dealers in the area pick it for post-opening dinners. The food is adequate. A highlight is the French dip served at lunch. Totally swarmed on the weekends, these days. —A.A.

I haven’t been in a long time, but I am comforted knowing that Freemans endures. When it opened in 2004, it proposed the novel idea that it would be satisfying to eat timeless (that is, slightly dated) American fare in a rustic tavern at the end of a shadowy Lower East Side alley.  devils on horseback and hot artichoke dip before a Liars show at Bowery ballroom? That sounds like heaven to me still. Many imitators followed, and an entire lifestyle brand eventually emerged: a Freemans Sporting Club (where I purchased the finest sweater I have ever owned) and a Freemans Sporting Club Barbershop. Only the restaurant remains, but as it approaches its 25th anniversary, it is a legend in our own time. —A.R.

The glory days of the power lunch may be over, but the ritual continues in high style at this compact and elegant place from art collector Ronald Perelman and French restaurateur Philippe Delgrange. The pasta is solid, and the salade niçoise is fantastic (the tuna is just barely cooked), but you are here for the crowd: dealers and philanthropists, potentates and their courtiers. There’s Ronald Lauder, perhaps hatching a new plan for Greenland, and over there, that’s Dominique Lévy, holding court. Perelman is in a back corner, watching it all. —A.R.

Earlier this year, I announced that Michael’s, the art-filled power-lunch spot near the Museum of Modern Art, is cool again. The TV producer Ryan Murphy did more to tip that domino than any curator coming from across the street. The restaurant was featured heavily in his enormously popular show Love Story, a fictionalized account of the marriage of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr., and saw a corresponding bump in foot traffic from the TikTok set. This was always our restaurant, though, and one we chose to abandon before a wave of nostalgic youngsters sporting C.O. Bigelow headbands put it back on the map. Now, galleries are hosting dinners on West 55th Street once more, beneath works by Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler, and Hockney, among many others in the restaurant’s collection. And they say Gen Z doesn’t care about art! —A.A. 

Where the Upper East Side lets its hair down. Welcome to Fanelli Cafe North. This is a no-fuss, no-frills kind of place for pub grub, where I have been seated between a table of art handlers and a high school soccer team's end-of-season banquet. Where have all the red-checkered tablecloths gone in New York? Where can I find a burger in this day and age that doesn't rob me of my cab fare? Where are all the places that serve spicy, wet wings? Say it with me: Dorrian's Red Hand! —A.A.

Throw a stone around lunchtime and you’ll hit a gallery employee at Happier Grocery. If they’re like me, they’re indulging in the chicken tenders and a side of the boutique grocery’s very expensive but very fresh produce. It was opened by WSA’s creative director, Gabriella Khalil, and her audience of art and fashion types has followed her to New York’s answer to Erewhon. (Many others have tried, but Happier does it best.) Along with the gallerinas, there may also be some Make America Healthy Again folks wandering around; you can find raw milk and plenty of seed-oil-free products for sale in the basement. —A.A.

The kids are alright at Gosh, and the food is even better. This zany, art-filled (Rachel Harrison! Mike Kelley! Rita Ackermann!) restaurant and nightclub was opened by two of the four young owners of the art gallery Amanita, Jacob Hyman and Tommaso Rositani Suckert, along with Lucas Hoffmann and Alex Vartivarian, the founder of the original Gosh bar in Florence, Italy. No one expected their food to be as good as it is—I recently heard another writer confess, sheepishly, that the burger might be “among the best in town.” Another friend says that she dreams about its beef tartare. It's also completely acceptable to just go there to party. —A.A. 

In the early 2010s, when on-the-make dealers clustered on the Lower East Side and Chinatown, Bacaro’s dark and moody basement was a prime place for a gallery dinner. Its Italian cuisine is simple and strong—vaguely Venetian—and it was here that I first tried spaghetti nero, awed by the cuttlefish ink, long before I made it to the Floating City. (I suspect that I am not the only one.) For a refreshing aperitivo, there is the bar upstairs and a menu that includes rice balls, burrata, and other dependable fare. There is a reason that it has survived since 2007. Galleries are once again opening in the area. Is it time for a comeback? —A.R.

Raoul’s has the best steak au poivre in New York and, for my money, the best profiteroles. I usually also split the frisée salad and get an artichoke vinaigrette when dining with family. Add a martini and maybe a glass of wine, and we are floating in heaven. The history and the art on the walls (what a great Larry Clark!) are what pushes this into truly sublime territory. Go with a group and dine at the big table in the back, as Leo Castelli peers down on you from a photograph taken long ago, in the restaurant’s old kitchen, which is now down in the basement. A tarot reader awaits you upstairs. This is why we live in New York. —A.R.

Where does one even begin? Opened in 1980 by Lynn Wagenknecht, Keith McNally, and Brian McNally, the Odeon is inseparable from the art world of that giddy and excessive decade, when Mary Boone was the queen of New York. Everyone in the New York art world—young or old, rich or poor—has dined here many times, and legends circulate about what this dining room has seen. (The restrooms downstairs have seen a lot, too.) It was the venue for Alex Katz’s 90th birthday, Metro Pictures’ 30th-anniversary celebration, and countless other revels, big and small, remembered and forgotten. The menu has something for everyone, and it has evolved subtly with the times (there’s avocado toast at brunch), but you are here for the classics: Oysters, steak frites, a stiff drink. —A.R.

“Meet me at midnight at Mr. Chow’s/Szechuan dumplings/Now that the deal has been done.” Those are lyrics from the Steely Dan song “Glamour Profession,” from their 1980 album Gaucho. It's been almost 50 years since Donald Fagen first sang them, but they remain relevant as art-world professionals continue to love Mr. Chow. This year, Michael Chow closed his location in Miami at the W Hotel in South Beach, where Gagosian famously hosts its annual Art Basel Miami Beach party, but two New York locations remain, thankfully. —A.A.

Since the great migration of galleries from Chelsea to Tribeca, Frenchette has become the premier status restaurant to host an opening dinner. It was opened in 2018 by two alums of Balthazar, Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson, whose pastries you may have tried at the cafe attached to the Whitney, Frenchette Bakery. Meals at Frenchette are always paired with a bottle of briny Vichy Catalan water, which Jorge Riera, the restaurant's wine director, informed me is "refreshing to sip after an espresso, and great to have with richer foods for helping with digestion.” It’s salt on top of salt if you order the oysters with chipolata sausages, which I usually do during months with an “r” in them. —A.A.

Faux is a newcomer to the Tribeca scene from George McNally, son of Keith. Because of the place’s pedigree, galleries started booking the downstairs for parties and openings even before it opened its doors. The young McNally has not disappointed. Both floors of the restaurant feel like a party, even when it isn’t officially a party, and though he insists that his father had nothing to do with the venture, the food is clearly made to McNally family standards. I recommend the grilled oysters and the paccheri pasta. —A.A.

When Barbara Gladstone, Matthew Marks, and Metro Pictures moved to West 24th Street in the late 1980s, they decided it would be nice to have a dependable restaurant nearby, and so they invested $10,000 with restaurateur Danny Emerman. The result was Bottino, which has surely hosted more gallery dinners than any other restaurant on the planet. The Italian menu offers no surprises—pastas, a chicken breast, a pork chop—but no one wants a surprise at a gallery dinner. Food needs to hit the table at a reasonable pace, and the wine needs to flow. At these things, Bottino excels. Its takeout spot next door serves seriously delicious sandwiches, salads, and lasagna. (If you have interned at a gallery, you have picked up these offerings.) At least once a month I need the number two on focaccia. —A.R.

Even as luxury towers have risen in West Chelsea, there is still a curious dearth of reasonably nice sit-down lunch spots in the area. Are those towers empty? Is real estate too pricey? Have entrepreneurs just decided that they can’t compete with Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman, the husband-and-wife owners of Cookshop? Every day, without fail, it is packed with gallery directors doing business over pasta and pizza, burgers and seafood, all of it better than it really needs to be. I’m told that it serves dinner, but I’ve never actually witnessed it. A bonus recommendation: One of the couple’s other restaurants, Vic’s, down on Great Jones Street, is a solid Italian play when doing galleries around SoHo, NoHo, and the like. —A.R.

It’s impossible to name drop every member of Downtown royalty I’ve seen dining at Omen without sounding like I’m reading Chloë Sevigny’s Instagram followers out loud. Across generations, Omen has had staying power among those who are extremely well-heeled but way too cool to brag about it, from Lou Reed to Rama Duwaji. It helps that the menu prices have remained reasonable relative to what sit-down Japanese food now goes for in the city, and the room is always dark and sexy. A classic for a reason. —A.A. 

There is something for everyone at Antonucci Cafe (that is, unless you are gluten-free). In recent press, both the artist Jeff Koons and the restaurateur Annie Shi called out this cozy Italian spot on the Upper East Side. Chicken Milanese and a rotating menu of pastas are served under lamps made by former regular Gaetano Pesce, who crafted placemats for Antonucci and its neighboring sister restaurant, Al Vaporetto. (They are framed in the bathroom.) Every wall is a salon wall, and if you look closely, you'll find artwork by Christo, Shirin Neshat, and Kenny Scharf among model ships and framed photographs of Marilyn Monroe and the like. I won’t lie to you and tell you it has the best Italian food in Manhattan, but it is far from the worst. —A.A.

There are several restaurants I have bookmarked for days where I’m out in the city alone, which I often prefer to be while bopping around galleries. Heidelberg is among my favorites. Rustic German food at a restaurant that has been family-run for over a century. I’ll usually go by to snack on some spätzle or a giant pretzel, or, if I’m hungry, the full sausage platter with perfect sauerkraut (this is not light eating), but I dream of bringing a group one day for the pork shank platter, portioned for two or four. With the winter months coming, and given its proximity to Museum Mile, I think I can make it happen. —A.A.

West Chelsea has lost some sterling bars over the years, like the Half King and Billymark's West, where a certain powerhouse art dealer is said to have once vanquished all his challengers at the pool table. Porchlight lacks their rugged charm, but it is a very dependable place for a drink, and it has pleasures all its own, like a Southern-leaning menu that includes a satisfying BLT, a strong burger, and a happy hour with $5 deviled eggs and $8 beers. It’s a Danny Meyer production, so the service is cheerful and the room is attractive. Time goes quickly when talking about art here. —A.R.

Two legends united for this tony boîte—sushi titan Masayoshi Takayama and art titan Larry Gagosian—and it has been going strong since 2014, a key hub for all sorts of power players. Leon Black, the embattled private-equity giant and former Museum of Modern Art chairman, invested $250,000 in the business, and the Epstein files revealed that Soon-Yi Previn and Woody Allen know their way around the menu, but dessert was ordered from the nearby Sant Ambroeus, a too-obvious name for this list. Omakase at Kappo Masa will set you back $350, but there’s also an à la carte menu of fish and Japanese delights to have while taking in art on the walls by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and other greats. There are worse ways to live. —A.R.

Where do Manuela and Iwan Wirth find the time? Alongside their far-reaching gallery empire, Hauser & Wirth, they have a hospitality firm, Artfarm, with a growing number of restos, hotels, and clubs across the United States and Europe. They opened their first Manuela on their Los Angeles compound. This one is in SoHo, conveniently down the street from a Hauser & Wirth branch. The menu has American fare that you could politely call dependable and undistracting, and the decor is action packed (or exhausting, depending on your taste). There are Mary Heilmann tables, a Mika Rottenberg chandelier, and art by Philip Guston, Nicolas Party, and other Hauser heavyweights. Would you like to live this way? A salesperson will be right over. —A.R.

Thank me later: Book a meal here the next time you have a trip planned to Pioneer Works. I’ll risk my name on their burger being as good if not better than the one down the street at Red Hook Tavern. The restaurant is dainty and refined at every other turn, besides the saltbomb burger. You can get one on the cheap on weekdays, for $30, and it comes with a mini martini. But if it were me, I’d come with a plan to take my time, order as many small dishes as possible, then sate your stomach with a burger for your finale. —A.A. 

A slice of Vienna on the Upper East Side! It was a stroke of genius by Ronald Lauder to open this grand cafe on the first floor of his Neue Galerie, which is devoted to German and Austrian art. I always feel that I understand the work of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele a bit more when eating an enormous sausage or one of the roughly 20 desserts on the menu. (Usually a Mozarttorte.) There’s often a line at lunch, but it moves. Reservations are available for dinner, and you can book tickets for a cabaret in the space on certain nights. If every museum paired its food and art offerings so gamely, the world would be a much more interesting place. —A.R.

The tables that overlook the Museum of Modern Art’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden are some of the most glamorous and romantic in town. The food could be horrible, and its setting would still make the Modern an essential visit. Happily, though, the French-American fare is extremely good. One ambitious option is to grab a private room, as many art institutions have been known to do for events. Another is to splash out on a tasting menu. But the Modern can also be an impulse play after an afternoon at the museum, if you can snag a seat in the bar room. There’s a separate menu there that includes outrageously delicious fried chicken. Have a drink or two. You deserve it. —A.R.

Westmoreland may be a bit of a stretch for this list—the art world is not hanging out regularly in this elegant and dignified little space, with a mural by Darren Waterston. But no visit to the Frick is complete without at least a quick tipple at this restaurant, which is named for the private train car used by collector Henry Clay Frick. (What a way to live!) The sensibility is hearty country-club food, done with real panache: a Caesar salad, a Scotch egg, and a tomato soup with a little grilled cheese on the side. A peach tart for dessert? Why not! A cocktail and then another cruise through New York’s most beautiful museum? It would be crazier to decline. —A.R.

A soft sculpture by Al Freeman Jr. and a triptych by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones are on view for those walking down Mott Street, courtesy of Oriana, which opened in the summer of 2026. The restaurant is all about collecting, in a way. It has a vast collection of wine, which is on display in cellars downstairs. In its private dining room there is a collection of vinyl; you can make a selection to play ahead of your meal. And then there is the art on the walls. Wood-fired meats are the order here: I had a pork chop that haunts my dreams. —A.A.

Stars is one of the rare perfect rooms in New York City. I visit regularly to aura farm. Trust me: Order the pickled honeycrisp apple slices, served chilled (they “get charged up with CO2 until they’re humming like Sprite” as critic Ryan Sutton wrote for the Times). Then, while ordering a glass of wine, trust your server: You won’t find a staff more enthusiastic about pouring the bar’s first-rate wines. (“Earthy and light” are my go-to adjectives when met with a wine list beyond my expertise; what are yours?) At every turn in Stars’s 450 square feet, the senses are pleased. This includes the restroom, where a no smoking sign by Frank Stella hangs. Stella made the piece in 1998 by blowing cigar smoke into a black box, photographing the silhouette, and converting them to a 3D scan. “Frank smoked cigars and drank vodka straight. It was pretty cool,” Stars' owner, Chase Sinzer, told me. But he “did not give one shit about wine.” —A.A.