If you have a Met subscription, a Philharmonic series or a film festival pass, where have you eaten before the curtain since June 2025?
Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud and Épicerie Boulud all closed that month at 1900 Broadway, across from Lincoln Center. West Side Rag gives the date as June 22 and Eater gives June 23. Eight months later, in February 2026, The Leopard at des Artistes closed at 1 West 67th Street after a 15-year run. Both spaces are now being refilled, but not at the same time. Brasserie Boulud opens Thursday, October 8. Café des Artistes is slated for early 2027. That leaves one restaurant carrying the entire fall season at the Lincoln Center end of the neighborhood.
How "Later This Year" Turned Into Fifteen Months
None of the coverage connects the Boulud closures to a lease ending or a building problem. Eater's June 2025 report described it as a planned consolidation, with the three adjacent spaces to be redesigned together with Rockwell Group. The timeline went like this:
- June 2025. The three Boulud spaces close. Eater says the new brasserie will open "later this year." This was the only Épicerie Boulud to close; Eater reported that the other four Manhattan locations would remain open.
- February 2026. The Leopard at des Artistes closes on West 67th Street.
- September 8, 2026. West Side Rag still expects the brasserie to open September 17.
- September 25, 2026. AirMax Hospitality announces Café des Artistes will return to 1 West 67th Street in early 2027.
- October 2, 2026. Eater reports the brasserie opens Thursday, October 8, "after months of delays." Reservations went live on Resy that day and were already booked well into October.
By opening night, the gap at 1900 Broadway will be close to 16 months. The building now has one dining room where it used to have three.
What 1900 Broadway Has Become
Brasserie Boulud is a two-story, 10,000-square-foot restaurant at Lincoln Plaza. It combines the menus of the three closed spaces. Former regulars will find dishes from each of the old rooms: seafood towers, French onion soup, steak frites, lobster soufflé, boudin blanc and the DB Burger. The charcuterie side includes pâtés from Maison Vérot, and the wine list leans on Burgundy and the Rhône, the regions around Boulud's childhood home outside Lyon.
The more useful detail for a resident is how the day is set up around performance times. Pre-theater and post-theater menus are back. Mornings will offer coffee and croissants to stay or to go. Rockwell Group's design includes a large central bar, private dining rooms and a hidden speakeasy that serves cocktails "well into the night." So the building covers the early dinner before an opera, the drink after the Philharmonic lets out, and a croissant on a weekday walk down Broadway.
Because three rooms became one, all of that demand now goes to a single reservation book. Before June 2025, if one Boulud room was full, there were two others next door. As of October 2, the one remaining room was booked well into October.
The First Weeks Are Already Booked
The October 8 opening lands in the last days of the 64th New York Film Festival, which runs September 25 through October 12. The Met's new production of Macbeth is also partway through its run, which opened the season September 22. The rest of the fall calendar is below, so you can see which evenings overlap with the booked-up opening weeks and which fall after them.
| Dates | At Lincoln Center | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 25 – Oct 12 | 64th New York Film Festival | Film at Lincoln Center |
| Sept 22 – Oct 20 | Macbeth, new production | Metropolitan Opera |
| Oct 7 and Oct 8, 7:30 pm | Blossom & The Shrub-Tones, then Elisapie; free | David Rubenstein Atrium |
| Oct 14 – 17 | Andrew Schneider's PLAZA; free, outdoors, all ages | Josie Robertson Plaza |
| Oct 19 – Nov 14 | Lincoln in the Bardo | Metropolitan Opera |
| Oct 24 | Batiashvili, Capuçon & Thibaudet | David Geffen Hall |
| Oct 28 – 31 | Get Out in Concert | David Geffen Hall |
| Oct 30 – Nov 21 | Medea | Metropolitan Opera |
| Nov 4, 5, 7 | Thibaudet performs Liszt | David Geffen Hall |
| Nov 16 – Dec 4 | Jenůfa | Metropolitan Opera |
| Nov 25, 27, 28; Dec 1 | Rouvali conducts Schubert's "Great" Symphony | David Geffen Hall |
| Nov 27 – Dec 23 | Samson et Dalila | Metropolitan Opera |
| Dec 6 – 22 | Maria Stuarda | Metropolitan Opera |
| Dec 11 – Jan 2 | The Magic Flute, holiday presentation | Metropolitan Opera |
| Dec 17 – 20 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Concert | David Geffen Hall |
The full lineup is on the Met's opera listings, the New York Philharmonic calendar and the Lincoln Center Presents series page.
The two free evenings in the Atrium fall on October 7 and October 8, the night before the opening and opening night itself. PLAZA follows the next week and runs four nights in the open on Josie Robertson Plaza. Lincoln Center lists all of these evenings as free, and they all fall within the weeks Eater reported as already booked.
The Second Stage, on West 67th Street
Café des Artistes is taking a different route back. The Hotel des Artistes board looked for a new operator and chose AirMax Hospitality, the group run by Ariel Arce and Max Katzenberg. Its restaurants include Tokyo Record Bar, Roscioli NYC, Pearl Box, Leonessa and Big Pearl Caviar. Both partners have personal ties to the area. Arce grew up in Hell's Kitchen and celebrated her graduation from LaGuardia High School at Café des Artistes. Katzenberg was born a few blocks away.
No chef has been announced. The team is gathering material first. A New York Times ad set to run Sunday, September 27, invites former diners, staff, neighbors and anyone else connected to the restaurant to send in stories, photos and keepsakes. Submissions also go to [email protected], and AirMax says it will use what comes in to shape the new restaurant.
The room comes with a lot of history. Café des Artistes opened in 1917 on the ground floor of the Hotel des Artistes, which was built as housing for artists. Many of its apartments had no kitchens, so the restaurant started as a dining room for residents. Over time it drew performers, musicians, writers and artists, including people working at nearby Lincoln Center. In 1934, the illustrator Howard Chandler Christy, who lived in the building, began painting the wood-nymph murals. They stayed on the walls after Café des Artistes closed in 2009 and through The Leopard's run. The era most people remember started in 1975, when George and Jenifer Lang took over and served salmon four ways, pot-au-feu and tarte à l'oignon.
"Early 2027" is a target, not a date. With no chef named, the menu hasn't been set. Neighbors who ate there under the Langs can contribute right now, before the restaurant opens.
Other New Openings Nearby This Fall
Several smaller places opened in the West 60s and low 70s this year, and none of them cater specifically to the theater crowd. Lady M held its grand opening at 1 West 60th Street on June 23, 2026. West Side Rag reported that CHIKARA, a Japanese restaurant, was set to open August 6 at 150 West 70th Street, between Broadway and Columbus Avenue. Wu's Dynasty, a Cantonese restaurant linked to Derek Wu, opened on West 70th Street between Amsterdam and West End avenues in September. Eater lists the address as 208 and Patch lists it as 210.
Next up is Café Alon, a kosher café and bakery from Israeli restaurateur Ofer Puder. It's expected in November at 200 West End Avenue, between West 69th and 70th streets. These places give residents more options for a weekday lunch or a morning coffee. For a sit-down meal before an 8:00 curtain this fall, Brasserie Boulud is the only large French restaurant on the list, and until Café des Artistes reopens, it has that slot to itself.
If you own a home near Lincoln Plaza or the Hotel des Artistes, it helps to keep track of when the ground floors of nearby buildings change hands, because those storefronts set the pace of your block. Our team at Jed Lewin, Esq. watches these changes building by building across the Upper West Side, and we're happy to discuss what a particular block's storefronts may mean for your own plans. Request a confidential consultation whenever you'd like.
