FILINGS SHOW NEW COMPANIES LINED UP THREE WILLIAMSBURG RESTAURANT SPACES BEFORE THE GOODBYE POSTS WENT UP

Three Williamsburg restaurants closed in seven weeks this fall. Barano, the wood-fired Italian place at 26 Broadway, closed after service on Sunday, Aug 30, ten years in. Monarch, the two-story restaurant at 146 Metropolitan Avenue, served its last brunch on Sunday, Sept 27. Antica Pesa, the Roman family's outpost at 115 Berry Street, had a goodbye on its website by Oct 16. By then all three addresses were on the same Community Board 1 agenda, each with a brand-new liquor license application. The goodbye posts tell you what the neighborhood lost. The paperwork tells you what's coming, and it says more than you'd expect, even with every name left blank.

Barano sat on Broadway between Wythe and Kent, a six-minute walk from the South Williamsburg ferry. Chef Albert Di Meglio opened it with partners Zach Weiner, Louis Silverman and Jonathan Soleimanzadeh, and named it after his grandmother's hometown in Italy. The cooking ran on a wood-fired oven: naturally fermented pizza, handmade pasta, natural wine. The saffron gigli was the dish people photographed. Its operating company, Mozzarella Holdings LLC, got its first state liquor license in April 2016. Its current license ran to February 2027. It now sits in the State Liquor Authority's inactive file, and OpenTable lists the restaurant as permanently closed.

Monarch came from people who already knew the neighborhood. Ayako and Lawrence Elliott ran Rabbithole in Williamsburg for 15 years before closing it in 2022. In February 2019 they opened Monarch on Metropolitan, a modern Asian restaurant on two floors, with a second bar upstairs and open-air seats over the avenue. Its liquor license, held by The Monarch Theatre LLC, expired Sept 30, three days after the last brunch. The farewell post, The Soft Open reported, thanked guests for "our last ten years." The restaurant at 146 Metropolitan was seven and a half years old.

Antica Pesa is the oldest name of the three. The Panella family has run the original in Rome since 1922, and the Brooklyn restaurant opened on Berry Street in 2012, steps from the Bedford Avenue L. Its license, held by Officine Antica Pesa NY LLC, also expired Sept 30. Its website now says it is temporarily closed, next to one line: "Williamsburg, we will never forget you." Google lists it as temporarily closed too. Nobody has announced a reopening.

None of the three has said publicly why it closed. Not one of them blamed a landlord on the record. What they share is a neighborhood, a season, and what happened next to each address.

In New York City, anyone who wants a liquor license has to notify the local community board before filing with the State Liquor Authority. Community Board 1, which covers Williamsburg and Greenpoint, sends those notices to its SLA Review and DCA Committee. The committee's Oct 28 meeting, 6:30 p.m. at the Polish & Slavic Center on Kent Street in Greenpoint, listed 16 new applications. Three of them are the addresses that had just gone dark.

At 26 Broadway, the applicant is 26 Broadway Restaurant LLC, "DBA Pending." It wants a full license (liquor, wine, beer and cider) for a restaurant, a temporary permit to pour while the state reviews it, and sidewalk seating through the city's Department of Transportation later on.

At 146 Metropolitan, the applicant is RHM 146 Metro LLC, also with no trade name yet. It wants a wine, beer and cider license for a restaurant, the same temporary permit, and a terrace attached to the second floor. That's Monarch's upstairs, the open-air seats over the avenue, and whoever comes next wants to keep them.

At 115 Berry, the applicant is 115 Berry Restaurant Group LLC. No trade name is listed at all. It wants a full liquor, wine, beer and cider license for a restaurant, plus the temporary permit.

All three are listed as new applications. A New York liquor license leaves with the operator, so a new tenant starts from zero even when the bar is still standing. The notice gives no owner names, no hours, no seat counts and no concept. As of Oct 27, none of the three shows up yet in the State Liquor Authority's public list of pending applications, which fits the order of things: board first, state second.

The New York Department of State keeps a record of every company allowed to do business here, with the day it filed. The three applicants line up like this.

RHM 146 Metro LLC is a Delaware company. It registered in New York on July 21, 2026. That's more than nine weeks before Monarch's last brunch.

26 Broadway Restaurant LLC is also a Delaware company. It registered in New York on July 30, 2026, a month before Barano's last service.

115 Berry Restaurant Group LLC is a New York company, formed on Sept 3, 2026, with a Manhattan mailing address. That's four weeks before Antica Pesa's license ran out and about six weeks before its goodbye was reported.

So two of the next operators had companies named for the address while the old restaurants were still seating people, and the third was set up weeks before Antica Pesa's goodbye was reported. Delaware companies don't have to list their owners, and the New York filings for all three name only the company itself as the contact. That's why we can't tell you who. We can tell you when. For at least two of these spaces, somebody was lining up the next restaurant while the old one was still serving.

Here's where it gets stranger. While 115 Berry Restaurant Group LLC was on the board's agenda, 115 Berry Street was on the market. A commercial listing from Kassin Sabbagh Realty, updated Oct 12 and still up when we checked Oct 27, offers the whole 2,500-square-foot building for lease, available immediately, as a "fully fixtured restaurant in the heart of North Williamsburg." It comes with venting, 400 amps and gas, and it notes that the previous tenant held a liquor license. The rent is on request. The record doesn't say which is true: an applicant without a signed lease, or a listing nobody took down.

At 146 Metropolitan there's an older listing, now marked off market and undated, that calls the building newly finished in 2019, the year Monarch opened. It describes three levels, a finished basement, a ground-floor bar and kitchen, and a second floor that opens onto a private terrace, and it asked $12,000 a month plus key money. We can't tell when it ran or what Monarch ended up paying. It does show what kind of space the new applicant is asking to pour in, terrace and all.

At 26 Broadway there's no restaurant listing we could find. The applicant there is the one that already plans for sidewalk tables.

The committee's vote is advice. It goes to the full board, and the full board's recommendation goes to the State Liquor Authority, which makes the call. That still matters: the board is where neighbors can show up, ask about hours and terraces, and get conditions written down before anything opens. Oct 28 was a full night. Besides the 16 new applications, the agenda carried 12 renewals and 13 items pushed from September.

What stays private is everything a regular would want to know. Who is behind each company. What the food will be. What the rent is now, and whether it's the reason any of the three left. Whether any applicant has ties to the old operators. Those answers show up later, in the state's pending list with a legal name attached, then on a license with a trade name, then on a sign.

Williamsburg lost three restaurants to a line that had already formed: companies registered while the old places still served, one terrace already spoken for, one building still being shown. The goodbye posts were the last public word from Barano, Monarch and Antica Pesa. The filings were the first word from whatever replaces them. The community board hearing is the one point where the neighborhood gets a say in which word lasts longer.

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