A SoHo address with serious pedigree has a new tenant. At 59 Grand Street — once Keith McNally's beloved bistro Lucky Strike — British chef Thomas Straker opened Straker's on October 10, his first US outpost. The demand has been wild: a waitlist reportedly approaching 50,000 people, with bouncers now posted outside on Saturday nights.
Straker built his name during the pandemic with videos of flavored butters — burnt chili, miso-nori brown butter, Café de Paris — cooked with a swagger that recalls the bad-boy chefs of decades past. That butter obsession runs through the New York menu too, but his cooking is more precise than his persona suggests: few ingredients, wood fire, and technique honed at London's Dorchester and under Heston Blumenthal at Dinner.
The signature dish is the burnt chili and mussel butter flatbread, on 48-hour cold-fermented dough, which lands on every table. Beyond that, expect Lucky Lime oysters, a Jonah crab and potato galette, a red shrimp and foie gras tostada, langoustines with gremolata and brown butter, and wood-roasted Dover sole with herb and lemon butter. Seafood comes from East Coast purveyors the same day it's caught, and there are nods to classic New York steakhouses — grilled strip and T-bone, both with an English-style beef sauce. The menu shifts daily, though the flatbread is staying put.
Head chef Luka Coyne, an Australian who has worked at Soso's and Tuxedo in New York, champions the grilled lamb skewers with Nardello peppers and apricot hot sauce.
The setting is half the show. The 59-seat room, designed with Post Company, revolves around an open kitchen framed by green countertops and white tablecloths, with bar seats facing the live fire. The walls carry serious art: six Damien Hirst drawings — including a blueprint for his 1991 formaldehyde shark — plus Keith Haring portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Even the bathrooms are floor-to-ceiling marble and mirror.
Getting here wasn't cheap or easy. The opening was delayed a year and reportedly ran about $2 million over budget, with a chunk spent on artwork, and the overall cost was roughly four times what launching in London would have been. Straker, who was born in Washington, DC, has said he wants guests to have the best night of their lives — and McNally himself has already been back three times.
For travellers, this is worth knowing about if New York is on your radar: it's one of the city's hottest new tables, blending British cooking, downtown attitude, and 1980s-style glamour in a room with real history. Book well ahead or try the bar at off-peak hours; the flatbread alone justifies the effort.
