New signage has gone up at 509 Amsterdam Avenue, the longtime home of Jacob's Pickles between West 84th and 85th Streets, revealing the name of the Western-themed bar taking its place: Velvet Cowboy. The venue is set to open September 29, and it comes from the same ownership group that ran Jacob's Pickles at that address for more than a decade.
According to West Side Rag, an unnamed bar director identified himself as leading operations for Velvet Cowboy, which will include two bars under one roof — a top-floor bar called the Velvet Cowboy and a ground-floor bar whose name has not yet been made public. The concept fits the mold Pickle Hospitality has used elsewhere on the Upper West Side, pairing themed dining and drinking spaces along Amsterdam Avenue, following a similarly retro-tropical approach at its nearby spot Tiki Chick, according to West Side Rag's earlier reporting.
Jacob's Pickles Left for a Bigger Home on Columbus
Jacob's Pickles vacated 509 Amsterdam Avenue after moving nine blocks north to 680 Columbus Avenue in October 2025, between West 93rd and 94th Streets. Owner Jacob Hadjigeorgis first signaled the move publicly at a Manhattan Community Board 7 meeting back in May 2024, telling the board he needed a much larger footprint after 13 years on Amsterdam Avenue, per iLoveTheUpperWestSide.com. The Columbus Avenue space, nearly twice the size of the old Amsterdam Avenue storefront, previously housed the Mexican restaurant Agave until September 2023 and was known for nearly two decades before that as the home of neighborhood favorite Gabriela's, the outlet reported.
The larger space was a practical fix as much as an upgrade. The relocation to Columbus Avenue expanded seating capacity to roughly 300 to 350 seats, easing wait times that had reportedly stretched up to four hours at the cramped original Amsterdam Avenue location, according to figures cited by the Observer and Postcard.inc.
A Restaurant Group Built Block by Block on the Upper West Side
Hadjigeorgis has been expanding steadily since opening Jacob's Pickles in 2011, later adding Maison Pickle in 2016, Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co. in 2018, Tiki Chick in 2019, and additional outposts in DUMBO, Moynihan Train Hall, and Citi Field, according to the same iLoveTheUpperWestSide.com report. The company also pushed beyond Manhattan in November 2023, opening a 10,000-square-foot, 300-seat Jacob's Pickles at The SoNo Collection in Norwalk, Connecticut, its first out-of-state suburban location, per a release from MaxEx Public Relations.
Hadjigeorgis's ties to the neighborhood go back to his years attending The Dwight School on the Upper West Side, before he launched the restaurant group with his father, George Hadjigeorgis, the same release noted. That local history includes weathering real hardship at the Amsterdam Avenue storefront: a four-alarm electrical fire in February 2017 that started at 511 Amsterdam Avenue spread to the Jacob's Pickles building, injuring seven people, displacing 19 residential families, and forcing the restaurant to close for months due to water damage, according to DNAinfo's reporting at the time.
In the aftermath, Jacob's Pickles and sister restaurant Maison Pickle organized GoFundMe drives and benefit events that raised more than $15,000 for the displaced residential neighbors, DNAinfo reported. Pickle Hospitality has also dealt with local design scrutiny before — Community Board 7 raised concerns in 2019 over Tiki Chick's retro-themed storefront signage, leading to minor alterations before that bar opened, according to West Side Rag's earlier coverage.
With Velvet Cowboy's opening date now set, the remaining unknowns are cosmetic: the name of its ground-floor bar and the shape of its food menu haven't been released. Jacob's Pickles, for its part, spent years as one of the neighborhood's go-to Southern comfort food spots at that same Amsterdam Avenue address before its move north.
