The doors at 425 Lafayette Street now open at 10 a.m. every day. You don't need a ticket or a reservation, and nobody is checking names at a host stand. Bar Torino, the new cafe in the Public Theater's lobby, takes guests first come, first served until 10 p.m. By 5 p.m. the wood-paneled dining room upstairs has started seating dinner. Most nights there's a show at Joe's Pub, and three productions are playing in the theaters around it.
Until September, the Public was a place NoHo went for a show. Now it covers a whole day. Each room takes guests on its own terms, and the rest of the corridor around it is still changing hands. That combination puts the most reliable evening in the neighborhood inside a single building through the end of the year.
The lobby runs on walk-ins
Bar Torino is the second location of a cafe that started in Hudson Yards. Eater NY described it as a "snacky cafe" opening alongside the building's new restaurant. It keeps the same hours every day of the week, Monday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Those hours give it a role the building never had. The old setup at the Public centered on evenings and curtain times. A lobby that serves from mid-morning to 10 p.m. without bookings works as a midday meeting spot, a place for a coffee between errands on Lafayette, or a quick bite for anyone who arrives early for a 7 p.m. set at Joe's Pub. The Bar Torino page lists the hours and the first-come policy. It doesn't spell out the menu, so check the counter on your first visit.
Dinner upstairs runs on a 14-day clock
The Astor opened on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, in the room that used to be the Library. It comes out of the Joe's Pub partnership. Serge Becker, Josh Pickard, Paul Salmon and Kevin Abbott launched Joe's Pub alongside the theater in 1998, and NoHo Hospitality partners Luke Ostrom and Andrew Carmellini joined later. Chef Angel Monge works with Carmellini on the menu. Eater's fall preview describes a menu modeled on old New York taverns and supper clubs. Dishes include Devilish eggs, steak Diane and French mushroom dip with au jus. Bar director Darryl Chan makes riffs on martinis, Manhattans and Bijous, and Josh Nadel runs the wine. Becker designed the red-banquette room around posters, playbills and photographs from the theater's history, along with new murals and portraits by Andre Carrilho.
Grub Street put The Astor on its late-September list of the best new restaurants. It singled out the Caesar salad, the roasted half-chicken, a pumpkin-and-cheese macaroni and a strawberry split.
Planning around The Astor is a different exercise from planning around the lobby. Dinner runs 5 to 11 p.m. daily. According to the restaurant's reservations page, tables are released 14 days ahead, with a waitlist alert if a night is full. Since the building's shows run on fixed dates, that window decides when you need to book. The table below works backward from some of the season's closing dates.
| If you want dinner before... | Show date | Astor tables release on |
|---|---|---|
| The Verge, closing weekend | Saturday, November 21 | Saturday, November 7 |
| We'll See, final performance | Sunday, November 29 | Sunday, November 15 |
| The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, final performance | Sunday, December 20 | Sunday, December 6 |
What's playing gives the building its rhythm
The restaurant and the cafe are new, but the reason they work as a pair is the calendar in the theaters around them. This fall the Public has three productions running in parallel.
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Newman Theater, October 8 through December 20, 2026
- The Verge, LuEsther Hall, October 27 through November 22, 2026
- We'll See, Barbaralee Theater, October 25 through November 29, 2026
Longtime Public regulars will know the Barbaralee by its old name. The theater's own seating-chart page notes that it was formerly the Anspacher.
Joe's Pub carries on unchanged, separate from The Astor though run by the same group. Its November and December listings include these dates:
- Basia Bulat, Thursday, November 5, 7 p.m.
- Alice Smith, November 13, then again December 9, 11 and 12
- House of SpeakEasy, November 17
From November 22 on, as The Verge and then We'll See close, Benjamin Button in the Newman and the Joe's Pub calendar will carry the building's evenings into December.
The rest of Lafayette is between tenants
The Public's three rooms stand out partly because two of the corridor's other well-known dining addresses are in transition this season.
At 372 Lafayette, on the corner of Great Jones Street, Enrique Olvera has closed Atla, his decade-old all-day Mexican restaurant. He kept the address for a new project called Bar Cosme. Eater's fall preview describes it as a bar first, with drinks from Sebastián Tollius, formerly of Clemente Bar. Food plays a real part too, with prix-fixe and à la carte menus, tortillas, salsas and asador-style cooking. It was slated for fall. Check Bar Cosme's Instagram for the current status before you walk over.
A few blocks east, a newcomer is on the way. HAGS served its last East Village meal on Sunday, October 18. Eater NY reports that it plans to reopen at 334 Bowery, at East Third Street, in January or February 2027. The new room is planned at 60 to 70 seats, with an à la carte menu, cocktails, and the pay-what-you-can Sunday brunch the restaurant was known for.
So the corridor's newest food will arrive in stages. Bar Cosme is pending at Great Jones, and HAGS is penciled in for early next year on the Bowery. Between now and the new year, the address with confirmed hours and a full program is the one at Astor Place.
A Thursday in November, built around the doors
Here's one way to string the building's rules together on a weeknight such as Thursday, November 5:
- Afternoon. Stop at Bar Torino in the lobby any time after 10 a.m. You don't need to book or plan ahead.
- Two weeks earlier. If you want The Astor before the show, book on the day tables release, 14 days out. Dinner service starts at 5 p.m.
- 7 p.m. Basia Bulat plays Joe's Pub. On another night, swap in a performance of The Verge, We'll See or Benjamin Button, depending on the date.
- After the show. Bar Torino stays open until 10 p.m. The Astor serves until 11 p.m.
Short of walking to the Bowery, a NoHo evening that starts at 5 p.m. and ends after 10 can now stay under one roof on Lafayette Street.
A restaurant changing hands on Lafayette or a new room going into an old space can shift how a block feels to live on, and it can shift how a nearby loft or condo shows to buyers. Gregory Cohen follows these changes in NoHo address by address. If you're thinking about what this season's openings mean for your own building, request a personalized market valuation and consultation.
