The Public Theater has a new place to eat before the curtain rises. The Astor opened Tuesday at 425 Lafayette Street near Astor Place in NoHo, taking over the space once occupied by the theater's longtime dining room, the Library, and reimagining it as an old-fashioned New York tavern and supper club.
The restaurant is a partnership between the team behind Joe's Pub, NoHo Hospitality Group, and The Public Theater itself. The collaboration brings together Serge Becker, Josh Pickard, Kevin Abbott, Paul Salmon, Luke Ostrom, and chef Andrew Carmellini, with Jersey Katz and Michelle Cunha serving as managing partners, per Eater New York. As Eater New York notes, that partnership expanded over time to fold in Ostrom and Carmellini's NoHo Hospitality Group, which now runs the space alongside the theater.
Carmellini leads the kitchen alongside chef Angel Monge, with a menu inspired by the golden age of New York dining, WhatNow reports. Diners can expect chips and dip, “Devilish” eggs, clams casino, and steak Diane, along with pigs in Wellington served with bourbon mustard and a French mushroom dip finished with au jus, according to Eater New York's rundown of the opening menu.
A Room Built for Old New York Nostalgia
The design leans hard into the supper-club fantasy: red banquettes, white tablecloths, and wood paneling fill the dining areas, according to Eater New York. Lamps, vintage photographs, theater posters, playbills, letters, and other artifacts from the Public Theater's history are scattered throughout the space, the outlet reports, and a mural by André Carrilho behind the bar depicts writers and Public Theater celebrities, as reported by The New York Times. The Times adds that the restaurant's name honors the founding family of the building itself.
The Astor spreads across several distinct rooms rather than one dining floor. There's a 70-seat dining room, a 20-seat bar, a 12-seat lounge, and a 52-seat mezzanine that overlooks the theater's lobby, per Eater New York's seating breakdown. More than 1,000 people can reportedly move through the entire building when The Public's theaters and Joe's Pub operate simultaneously, per the outlet, underscoring the scale The Astor is built to serve as showtime approaches.
Cold Cocktails and a Companion Café
The bar program leans on classic New York cocktails, with a section called “From the Ice Box” dedicated to very cold martinis, Manhattans, and Bijous, according to Eater New York. The cocktails are served very cold.
Downstairs, the building also debuted a companion spot: Bar Torino, a ground-floor café and aperitivo bar. The Times describes it as a tambour-paneled space that opens at 10 a.m. serving panini and pastries before shifting into Italian snacks paired with aperitivi later in the day. The Astor itself opens daily at 5 p.m., while Bar Torino keeps its earlier daily start, according to BroadwayWorld.
Part of a Bigger Theater-Dining Trend
The Astor and Bar Torino aren't reinventing the wheel so much as extending a relationship that's been building for decades. The openings continue a hospitality partnership between Joe's Pub and The Public Theater that dates back to 1998, according to EV Grieve. Eater New York also points to a broader citywide pattern of restaurants embedding themselves inside cultural institutions, citing Zoli's recent opening next to the Amant art space in East Williamsburg as another example, and noting that Wild Cherry opened alongside the revived Cherry Lane Theatre in the West Village last year.
Whether diners come for the steak Diane, the ice-box Manhattans, or simply a bite before the show, The Astor is pitched as exactly that kind of pre-curtain destination. The Astor offers a polished option for pre-theater dining in New York.
