LATIN JAZZ AND DJ SETS AT SUBROSA

A new way to get your lunch and dinner from the mastermind behind the Momofuku empire.

Expert restaurateurs Jon Neidich, Jean-Marc Houmard, and Huy Chi Le know a thing or two about opening a sensational space. With extremely successful ventures like Acme and Indochine under their belts, it was only a matter of time before they tackled their next project, this time in the form of a Lower East Side Mexican lounge aptly titled Tijuana Picnic.

“Nightlife is escapism,” says dance club and pop-up party veteran Travis Bass. “It’s very carnal, in a way. At night, it’s that ritualistic and animalistic time where you can dance and hug and jump around and get wild and be like a kid again.”

The Top Chef semi-finalist has become a New York culinary fixture, helming The Surf Lodge in Montauk. We caught up with Talbot after dinner service, at the beginning of his tenure, over drinks.

In just a few short years, Gabe Stulman’s restaurant collective, Little Wisco, which includes the West Village-based Joseph Leonard, Jeffrey’s Grocery, Fedora, Perla, and Chez Sardine, has firmly solidified itself among New York’s most sought-after restaurants. Known for creating intimate, exceptionally designed spaces with top-tier chefs, Stulman has garnered somewhat of a cult following, and his newest restaurant, Montmartre—with chef Tien Ho, a Má Pêche and Ssäm Bar alum—follows suit.

New York dining is at its finest when a restaurant achieves a certain harmony with the neighborhood that surrounds it. For Gabriel Stulman, whose foursome of West Village high points—Joseph Leonard, Jeffrey’s Grocery, Fedora, and, most recently, Perla—this quality has come about by way of an inverse process: the neighborhood itself has been informally renamed Little Wisco, in homage to his Midwestern touch. Alike in their commitment to combining classic preparation with an overtly contemporary twist, the restaurants are celebrated by a merry band of followers that includes high-minded critics and the creative branch of twenty- and thirty-somethings who prefer life south of Union Square.

Gabriel Stulman is apologizing. A New York summer is here, dense and unforgiving, and Stulman has taken a momentary break from his daily hopscotch to sit down beside the open-air kitchen of Joseph Leonard, one of his three downtown culinary experiments, now buzzing with employees making adjustments to the antiquated interior. Amid the motion, the only certainties are the heat and the sincerity of his apology for placing me within it.