"Get here at 5 p.m."
That's the most useful thing anyone has said about Straker's, the new restaurant at 59 Grand Street. Brock Heath, its general manager, said it in a Resy interview published Oct. 29. Two blocks west, at the corner of Thompson Street, Kythira NP serves its first plates an hour earlier than that. Both restaurants arrived on the same stretch of Grand Street this fall. At both, the easiest table goes to someone who lives close enough to walk over before the evening rush. Clicking faster than a booking queue doesn't help much.
Six and a half years dark at 59 Grand
Keith McNally opened Lucky Strike on the corner of Grand and West Broadway in 1989. It ran for 31 years. Eater reported its permanent closure in April 2020, after McNally said the pandemic had made the business unworkable.
The room stayed quiet until Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, when Straker's opened there. It's the first American location of London chef Thomas Straker's namesake restaurant. In an interview with Eater, Straker said he knew he wanted the space as soon as he walked in. The deal took about six months, and he signed the lease in April 2025. His team took out the old kitchen and built an open kitchen and an open bar. He said the build ran about 12 months late and roughly $2 million over budget.
The new room still remembers its old tenant. Post Company designed the interiors with nods to Lucky Strike. The drinks list has a Lucky Strike cocktail, which Resy describes as a tribute to the McNally restaurant that held the address for more than three decades. The kitchen is run by Luka Coyne, an Australian chef Straker hired for New York. The dish Straker says he brought over from London is a mussel flatbread baked in the wood oven. He told Eater it has been on his menu since the first restaurant opened.
How the room actually fills
Online reservations are mostly a contest of reflexes. Heath told Resy that tables open two weeks ahead at midnight and fill "within seconds." At the end of October he estimated 30,000 to 35,000 people on the waitlist, plus about 5,000 a day using Resy's Notify alerts. Cancellations are rare, he added.
The door works differently. Straker's opens at 5 p.m. every day of the week and closes at 11. Heath said walk-ins who show up at 5 get seated as far as the room allows, and the bar runs for "about an hour straight" before the reservations arrive. On one recent day, about 20 people were waiting at the door and he could seat 10 of them. He told Resy that people who come by in the early afternoon sometimes get booked in for later "if we're in the right mood," and that he once told a woman who stopped in around 1 p.m. to come back at 5. If you live a few minutes from West Broadway, a coin flip at the door is better odds than a midnight queue against tens of thousands.
Heath called 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. the prime window, then mentioned that one night the whole room filled again at 11 p.m.
The restaurant's own website sends bookings to Dorsia. As of Nov. 6, Best Eats NYC listed both Resy and Dorsia. Dorsia works on a different model. According to Dorsia's FAQ, members confirm a table by prepaying a minimum spend, and the full prepayment goes toward the bill. The minimum changes with timing, availability and demand.
As for what's being served, The Infatuation's Oct. 22 review called it "a loud, loose, white-tablecloth scene, with hedonistic food." Resy's list of essential dishes includes the langoustines, anchovy crostini, grilled lamb skewer and strip steak, with chocolate tart and burnt honey ice cream for dessert.
An hour earlier, two blocks west
Kythira NP opened at 32 Grand Street on Monday, Sept. 21. It's the first solo restaurant from Greek chef Nicholas Poulmentis, whom Eater's September openings roundup knows from Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay. The menu leans on seafood, with ceviche, oysters and stuffed calamari. There are also spinach pies, goat cheese gnocchi, lamb chops and a vegetarian moussaka. The restaurant is named for Poulmentis's native Ionian island.
Kythira and Straker's reach the same block of Grand Street from opposite ends of the evening. Kythira opens at 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and at 3 p.m. on Sunday. It closes at 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 on Friday and Saturday, and 9 on Sunday. Reservations go through OpenTable. Between 4 and 6 p.m., the kitchen serves a four-course pre-theater menu of appetizer, salad, main course and dessert for $35 per guest. OpenTable puts the restaurant in its "$50 and over" price category.
So at Kythira, a set four-course dinner starts about an hour before Straker's opens its doors.
Grand Street by the clock
For a weeknight on this stretch, the day runs in this order:
- 4 p.m. Kythira opens at Grand and Thompson, and the $35 pre-theater menu starts.
- 5 p.m. Straker's opens at Grand and West Broadway, with roughly an hour of bar seating for walk-ins before reservations start arriving.
- 6 p.m. Kythira's early menu ends.
- 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Straker's prime reservation window.
- 10:30 p.m. Kythira's last service Monday through Thursday, or 11:30 on Friday and Saturday.
- 11 p.m. Straker's closes, after a night Heath said included a full late seating.
The rest of SoHo's fall kept the same early-and-late split
Grand Street isn't the only place in SoHo where the season's openings pair a daytime counter with an evening room. The most useful new daytime spots cluster on Spring and Prince streets.
- La Salumeria Soho, 195 Spring Street at Sullivan, opened Sept. 25. It sells $15 Italian sandwiches daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., plus Italian wine, aperitivi and cheese tastings. It comes from chef Salvo Lo Castro of the adjoining Casasalvo.
- ÓOL, 178 Spring Street, opened Sept. 9. Founder Ilana Gutierrez serves single-source cacao drinks with pastries made with Breads Bakery.
- Sandwell, 157 Prince Street, from founder Andy Gottlieb, makes toasted sandwiches to order on bread baked in-house, according to Patch.
The other new dinner rooms are spread around the neighborhood's western and southern edges. Romy opened Sept. 22 at 199 Prince Street, in the former Little Prince space. Chef Lucrezia Stella runs an Italian-leaning steakhouse menu with caviar service and a dry-aged wagyu porterhouse. What Now reported that Good Company opened Oct. 8 at 343 West Broadway. It's from Out of Office Hospitality partners Jesse Rosen and Mike Kanevsky, with executive chef Robert Sieber cooking seasonal American comfort food. At 32 Spring Street, chef Jaime Pesaque and Daddy Yankee opened Cholapink on Oct. 28. It's a Peruvian fast-casual spot built around grilled anticuchos, What Now reported.
None of these rooms has the queue Straker's has. Still, the pattern holds across the neighborhood. This fall's openings in SoHo serve anyone who can show up at an unusual hour: a sandwich counter at 8 a.m., a Greek kitchen at 4, a bar seat on Grand Street at 5.
Knowing which hour gets you a table is the same kind of local detail we bring to every downtown conversation at the Steven Cohen Team. If you're weighing how a corner like Grand and West Broadway shapes the value of a nearby loft or co-op, we would welcome the chance to schedule a private consultation.
