A nearly 8,500-square-foot Italian restaurant and market is set to open at Grand Central Terminal next month, planting itself at the ground-floor point where the historic terminal meets One Vanderbilt. Osteria Centrale and Mercato Centrale will bring roughly 250 seats, a 50-seat ovoid bar, and a market stocked with more than 500 grab-and-go items to a stretch of the terminal's main level that faces the entry area to One Vanderbilt's Summit, a three-level observation complex.
The project comes from Vizz Group, the hospitality company founded by Rick Blatstein, as reported by the New York Post. Vizz Group already runs Grand Brasserie in the terminal's Vanderbilt Hall, and Blatstein founded the company after selling OTG Management, an airport dining operator running roughly 350 locations across U.S. terminals, to private equity firms Oaktree Capital Management and Centerbridge Partners, according to Forbes.
A Sprawling Space Built for Commuters and Tourists Alike
Osteria Centrale will run from lunch through late-night, according to the Post's reporting, with a menu built around cichetti, salads, antipasti, mozzarella-bar items, sandwiches, and branzino in parchment. Executive Chef Guillaume Thivet, who previously served as executive chef at Verōnika at Fotografiska and trained at Bouley, Brasserie Les Halles, and La Grande Boucherie, described his approach as celebrating Italian cooking through a lively New York osteria rooted in tradition and designed for sharing, per the Post.
The shared Osteria Centrale and Mercato Centrale space was designed by Rockwell Group, whose founder David Rockwell also designed Grand Brasserie and Palladino's inside the terminal. Rockwell called Grand Central Terminal one of his favorite places in New York, according to the Post's account.
The MTA's Deal Terms and Fiscal Pressure
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority leased the new eatery and market with base rent set at $630,000 for the first 15 years, working out to roughly $74 per square foot, the Post reported. Once revenue exceeds that $630,000 threshold, the lease requires 11% of gross sales to be paid to the MTA.
The agency is pursuing the deal as it diversifies and expands Grand Central's hospitality venues, aiming to make the terminal more of a destination for both people and events, per the Post's reporting. That push comes as the MTA faces a projected $300 million deficit for fiscal 2027, a shortfall that grows to a projected $500 million in fiscal 2028, according to World Journal. Facing those farebox shortfalls, transit officials have been converting underused infrastructure into commercial leases, turning a former elevator shaft facing Vanderbilt Plaza into a grab-and-go counter and a decommissioned Chase Bank ATM alcove into a bar and cafe, the outlet reports.
From Rite Aid to Regional Italian Market
The Osteria Centrale footprint itself carries its own transition story: the space was occupied by a Rite Aid pharmacy for 25 years, and when the MTA put the vacant footprint out for bid, no pharmacy chains submitted proposals, prompting the pivot toward food and beverage, per the same World Journal report. The outlet also notes that Rite Aid no longer occupied the space.
That vacancy fed into a terminal-wide pattern. Grand Central maintained over 90% retail occupancy in 2025, according to Metro-North Railroad figures cited by the MTA. The terminal draws about 750,000 daily visitors, a mix of suburban commuters, subway riders, tourists, and Midtown office workers, per Forbes.
Part of a Broader Push to Enclose and Monetize Historic Spaces
The Osteria Centrale lease is not an isolated move. The MTA also initiated plans in mid-2026 to re-bid the lease for the historic Campbell Apartment cocktail lounge, which currently generates over $1 million in annual base rent, with the goal of replacing seasonal outdoor bar setups with enclosed year-round operations, World Journal reported. Current operator Scott Gerber has signaled plans to bid on the expanded venue lease, according to the outlet.
Vizz Group's operating model leans on capturing the terminal's round-the-clock foot traffic. The company expanded Grand Brasserie's hours in September 2025 to 20.5 hours daily, running from 5:30 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and added a late-night prix-fixe menu aimed at late commuters and night-owl diners, per Forbes. Grand Brasserie itself opened in October 2024 as a 400-seat, nearly 16,000-square-foot French restaurant in Vanderbilt Hall, taking over the lease from City Winery, according to a release distributed via PR Newswire.
