NEW YORK'S NEXT BIG OPENING IS A RESTAURANT THAT DIED IN 2009

Café des Artistes closed in August 2009 after 92 years at 1 West 67th Street. On Sept. 25 it announced it was coming back. The Italian restaurant that filled the space for most of the years in between, The Leopard at des Artistes, served its last meal on Feb. 15. The new operators are keeping the name, the murals and the dishes regulars remember. Across Central Park and in Brooklyn the same move keeps repeating: somebody takes over an old restaurant, keeps the name or the look or both, and sells the city a place it already loved. Here is every revival on the list, who is behind it, what they kept and what it took.

Café des Artistes opened in 1917 in the lobby of the Hotel des Artistes, a building of artists' studios, as a dining room for the people who lived upstairs. In the 1930s the illustrator Howard Chandler Christy painted the wood-nymph murals that made it famous. The murals belong to the building, which is why they stayed through everything that followed. George Lang owned the restaurant from 1975. In August 2009 the Langs shut it for good, citing steady losses and a union lawsuit over missed benefit payments, NBC New York reported then. Jenifer Lang called it "a death in the family."

Gianfranco and Paula Sorrentino reopened the space in May 2011 as The Leopard at des Artistes and kept the murals on the walls. Gianfranco died in November 2024. In early February the family announced the end, and The Leopard served its last meal on Feb. 15, I Love the Upper West Side reported.

Seven months later the old name came back. Ariel Arce and Max Katzenberg run AirMax Hospitality, which also runs Tokyo Record Bar, Pearl Box, Leonessa and Roscioli NYC, according to USA Today. They announced Café des Artistes on Instagram on Sept. 25, set up an inbox for old regulars' stories and photos, and ran a half-page ad in the Sunday Times asking former diners to get in touch, Caper and USA Today reported. Arce's parents were fans, and she had her high school graduation lunch there, she told Grub Street. The plan is the original name, the murals as they are, and signature dishes back on the menu, including salmon four ways, pot-au-feu and tarte à l'oignon. West Side Rag, citing Eater, said it opens early next year; Caper said 2027 and reported they were still looking for a culinary director. "We need to honor the history, but also usher it into a modern landscape," Arce told Caper.

Donohue's Steak House sat at 845 Lexington Avenue, at 64th Street, from 1950, when Maureen Donohue-Peters's father opened it, until June, East Side Feed reported. In April she told Patch the reason was personal: she no longer felt comfortable in the city and was moving to the Hamptons full time. She took the polished bar top, the back bar, the Formica tables and the tufted black vinyl booths to Donohue's East, her place on the East End of Long Island. On the furniture, she told East Side Feed, "He didn't want it, so it went."

He is Jon Neidich, whose Golden Age Hospitality signed the lease this summer. The Donohue's name was not for sale, East Side Feed reported, and Grub Street put it plainly: it's a name he isn't allowed to use. Everything else, he wants. He plans to refurbish the wood walls and the black-and-white floor, put black vinyl booths back on at least one side, and set the new bar where the old one stood, Grub Street reported. The Garland broiler stays in the kitchen. His chef, Marjorie Meek-Bradley, is working on a menu of broiled meats and a few sides, and the target is next spring. His stated aim to East Side Feed was to keep as much of the old place as he can, with a lot of restoration and some preservation. He expects plenty of old regulars to come back, he told Grub Street, and he gave the reason the whole wave exists: "After the pandemic, you saw a hunger for nostalgia."

Brooklyn got there first, and in all three cases a retiring owner handed the place to someone who kept what people came for.

Pilar and Joseph Montero opened Montero Bar & Grill in 1939 and moved it to 73 Atlantic Avenue in 1948, Whatnow reported in January. Their son Pepe ran it until he retired this year. Brothers Alex and Miles Pincus, who run the hospitality group Crew, took over in March and bought the four-story building, Patch reported. The plan, in Alex Pincus's words to Whatnow, was "keeping Montero, Montero." The decor, the cheap beer and the karaoke stayed. What changed, per Grub Street: compliance signs, credit cards, a free pool table and a renovated kitchen so the bar can cook again.

Sam's opened on Court Street in Cobble Hill in 1930, started by Danny and Sam, great-uncles of Lou Migliaccio, who ran it until he retired at 69. It closed in 2025. Georgia Fulton, who spent 12 years serving at the Long Island Bar around the corner on Atlantic Avenue, took it over and reopened it at 238 Court Street in September with the same name, façade and décor, Grub Street and Fine Dining Lovers reported. PIX11 counted about 90 percent of the old menu still on it, chicken parm and baked clams included. Migliaccio asked her not to change too much, according to Grub Street.

Ferdinando's Focacceria fed Union Street for more than 120 years. Frank Buffa announced his retirement in 2024 and asked Sal Lamboglia, the chef behind Cafe Spaghetti across the street, to take it over. It reopened in April at 151 Union Street as Bar Ferdinando, with the old sign, the yellow and maroon, the tile floor and the tin ceiling, Brooklyn Magazine reported. The spleen sandwich didn't make the cut. Lamboglia drew the line himself: "I am not resurrecting Ferdinando Focacceria," he told Brooklyn Magazine.

The part you see is the easy part to keep. The part you don't see is what the new owners are paying for. Lamboglia redid the entire electrical system at Ferdinando's, and what he found behind the walls was a mess, he told Grub Street. Montero's needed its kitchen rebuilt before it could serve food again. At Sam's, Fulton told Grub Street that in an old building things will break and will have to be brought up to code. On Lexington, the booths that made Donohue's look like Donohue's are on Long Island now, so the ones going in will be new ones built to look old.

Grub Street, which calls the trend "prehab," traces it back through places that kept an old interior when the owners changed: the Long Island Bar on Atlantic Avenue, where Joel Tompkins and Toby Cecchini kept the 1950s look of the old Long Island Restaurant, and the refreshed Le Veau d'Or, Gage & Tollner and S&P Lunch. Cecchini said nothing required them to keep it, Grub Street reported, and that no designer could have faked how worn the place already was.

Every revival on this list is a bet on one thing: the customers already exist. A new restaurant has to find its crowd one night at a time. An old name comes with one. Look at how AirMax announced its plans: a newspaper ad asking the people who used to eat there to write in. Caper reported the team hopes to win back former patrons, residents of the Hotel des Artistes among them. Neidich told Grub Street he expects the Donohue's crowd to return. That is the business case, stated by the people making it.

The Brooklyn three are a different case from the Manhattan two. Montero's, Sam's and Ferdinando's passed from retiring owners to new ones who kept the names and the look. Café des Artistes is a name lifted off a restaurant that closed in 2009, and on Lexington the old owner took the furniture with her and kept the name. By the time Café des Artistes reopens, it will have been gone 18 years. Arce told Grub Street that everything feels homogenized right now. Her answer to that is a dining room from 1917.

New York has plenty of nostalgia already. What it needs are restaurants worth reviving in 2045, and those only exist if someone opens them now. Every lease that goes to an old name is a lease spent on a sure thing. The murals never left West 67th Street. The new ideas did.

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