Stand at Broadway and West 64th Street this week and you can see two of the five blocks that have rebuilt the dinner hour around Lincoln Center. The lights are back on at 1900 Broadway. Two blocks south, at the corner of Columbus and 62nd, a new two-floor Italian restaurant is getting ready to open where Rosa Mexicano served guacamole for close to 25 years. Up at 1 West 67th Street, the room with the wood-nymph murals is empty for now. A new team is collecting diners' memories of the restaurant that filled it for most of the last century.
Since 2025, every long-running dining room in this part of the Upper West Side has closed or moved. In every case, whatever comes next is larger than what left, or goes back to a name older than the one it replaces.
Four Addresses, About Eighteen Months
| Address | Who was there | What's there now | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 Broadway at West 64th | Boulud Sud, Bar Boulud, Épicerie Boulud | Brasserie Boulud | Opened October 8, 2026 |
| 61 Columbus Avenue at West 62nd | Rosa Mexicano | La Pecora Bianca Lincoln Square | Opens October 19, 2026 |
| 44 West 63rd Street, Empire Hotel | Ed's Chowder House | Rosa Mexicano, relocated | Moved September 10, 2025 |
| 1 West 67th Street | The Leopard at des Artistes | Café des Artistes | Early 2027 |
Nobody planned these four as a set. Each one followed its own lease and its own timeline. They are worth reading together because they all point the same way.
1900 Broadway Grew While It Sat Dark
In 2025, all three of Daniel Boulud's restaurants on the same Broadway block closed. I Love the Upper West Side wrote that the pre-theater crowd had "been making other plans ever since."
When the name and concept were first announced in September 2025, the plan called for a two-story, 7,500-square-foot flagship with about 170 seats, open by the holidays. The holidays passed. According to Eater NY, the restaurant that opened on Thursday, October 8 covers 10,000 square feet. The New York Times, as cited by I Love the Upper West Side, put it at 320 seats indoors and out, which makes it Boulud's biggest restaurant in the city. Over the delay, the planned seat count nearly doubled.
The three old rooms are now inside one Rockwell Group design. The Lincoln Square BID describes it as built around a floating oval bar, with Épicerie Boulud and a cocktail lounge called Bar Viv folded in, plus three private dining rooms and café seating outside along Broadway. Boulud explained the concept in the BID's announcement:
"Growing up in Lyon, I was inspired by the great brasseries of France—lively, generous places with a convivial spirit, rooted in tradition and seasonal cooking."
Christina D'Angelo, who ran the Boulud Sud kitchen and has worked with Boulud for more than a decade, is executive chef. Several dishes from the closed rooms are back, including the merguez and saffron spaghetti from Boulud Sud and the foie gras-stuffed DB Burger. The rest of the menu is brasserie standards: seafood towers, onion soup, steak frites, lobster soufflé and boudin blanc.
The hours matter if you plan around a curtain. The brasserie serves Tuesday through Sunday, 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. Épicerie Boulud runs 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the same days, and Bar Viv pours from 4 p.m. until midnight. Eater reports that pre- and post-theater menus are coming back. As of October 2, it also reported that reservations on Resy were booked well into October.
Rosa Mexicano Moved for Room, and Its Old Corner Got Bigger Too
Rosa Mexicano didn't close. On September 10, 2025, it moved from 61 Columbus Avenue to 44 West 63rd Street, inside the Empire Hotel. West Side Rag reported a representative's explanation that "more space was needed." So one of the neighborhood's longest-running pre-theater dining rooms is now a block away, and it moved to get bigger.
The space it left opens Monday, October 19 as La Pecora Bianca Lincoln Square. Owner Mark Barak first brought the plan to Community Board 7's Business & Consumer Issues Committee in June 2024, and the committee backed it unanimously. Back then he expected to open in late 2025. The restaurant says the new location covers two floors with an Amalfi Coast feel, and calls it its "largest and most ambitious" location yet. That puts it in the same position as Brasserie Boulud: a delayed opening that ends with the operator's biggest room.
Neighbors already know the food from the first Upper West Side location at 359 Columbus Avenue and 77th Street, which opened in 2022. Pasta is made in-house every day, and the signature dishes are rigatoni vodka, gramigna and tagliatelle bolognese. Gluten-free pasta is available on request. I Love the Upper West Side notes that the Lincoln Square menu hasn't been published, and that menus usually differ only slightly between locations.
1 West 67th Street Is Bringing Back a Name From 1917
The third address follows a different route but lands in the same place. The successor carries more history than the restaurant it replaces.
The Leopard at des Artistes, run by Gianfranco Sorrentino and Paula Bolla-Sorrentino, served its last dinner on Sunday, February 15, 2026, after opening in the Hotel des Artistes space in 2011. "It is time to say goodbye. What an incredible journey it has been!" the owners wrote, as quoted by West Side Rag. Eater NY reported that the team said the restaurant had become "simply not sustainable."
The building's board went looking for a new operator. It chose Ariel Arce and Max Katzenberg of AirMax Hospitality, who plan to reopen Café des Artistes in early 2027 in the room it occupied from 1917 to 2009. In June, Katzenberg went before Community Board 7 on behalf of the applicant, Air Cafe LLC. The restaurant's name came with the September announcement.
The original café began as a dining room for Hotel des Artistes residents, many of whose apartments had no kitchens. According to Eater NY, it later became a destination for performers and writers drawn to nearby Lincoln Center. Howard Chandler Christy started painting his murals there in 1934. They outlasted the café's 2009 closing and the Leopard's 15-year run, and Katzenberg has said they will stay untouched in a renovation he describes as cosmetic.
At a June Community Board 7 hearing, the team laid out a French-American, à la carte fine-dining restaurant. It will serve lunch seven days a week starting at noon, with no breakfast and no late-night service. The last seating will be at 10:30 p.m., and guests will be out by midnight. No chef or final menu has been announced.
Anyone who ate at the original can help shape the new one. The restaurateurs ran an ad in The New York Times asking for memories, photos and stories, sent to [email protected] or by phone at 646-389-1005, as West Side Rag reported.
The Smaller Doors Filling In Around the Big Rooms
The big rooms take reservations weeks out. A run of smaller openings this year covers the nights when the plan is a quick bite before an 8 p.m. curtain.
- Lucia Pizza, 159 Columbus Avenue between West 67th and 68th, opened October 5 in a former Starbucks. The shop is small and has standing counters, no tables.
- Wu's Dynasty, a Cantonese restaurant at 208 West 70th Street, was reported to be starting regular service in early September.
- Lady M opened its bakery and cake shop at 1 West 60th Street at Columbus Circle on June 23.
- Casa Louie Waterline, an Italian restaurant in the former Empellon Taqueria space at 645 West 59th Street, opened May 20.
- Café Alon, a café and bakery announced for 200 West End Avenue between West 69th and 70th, was expected in November. The opening hasn't been confirmed.
The Dates Still Ahead
The rest of this turnover follows a calendar of its own, and two of the three remaining dates are still projections.
- Monday, October 19: La Pecora Bianca Lincoln Square opens at 62nd and Columbus.
- November: Café Alon is expected on West End Avenue, still unconfirmed.
- Early 2027: Café des Artistes returns to 1 West 67th Street, with chef and menu to be announced.
The fall season at Lincoln Center is already well underway. The New York Philharmonic opened September 10. On September 22, the Metropolitan Opera opened with Lise Davidsen and New York City Ballet began its season with Balanchine. As of today, the area across Broadway already has one more 320-seat room than it had last fall, and in a week it will have two-floor La Pecora Bianca on the old Rosa Mexicano corner.
If you own near Lincoln Center and want to know how this fall's openings might affect what your home could sell for, Ann Ferguson LLC can walk you through it block by block. Schedule a Complimentary Market Evaluation.
