Columbus Avenue's New Openings Started Somewhere Else

Lucia Pizza at 159 Columbus Avenue has no tables and no chairs. Its compact room has standing bars for about a dozen people, West Side Rag reported in its preview. The shop opened October 5 with slices and pies that include the Papa Leone vodka pizza, Grandma and Sicilian squares, calzones and garlic knots. That spare room is not a first try. Founder and head chef Salvatore Carlino started Lucia in Brooklyn, and the Columbus shop is his fifth, I Love the Upper West Side reported.

That pattern holds up and down the avenue this fall. Most of the businesses arriving on Columbus already proved they could draw a crowd somewhere else in the city. They are landing on a strip that lost several long-running originals between August and October.

The Avenue, South to North, as of Mid-October

From the Lincoln Square end up to the mid-80s, this is the state of Columbus Avenue's storefronts right now:

1. Columbus and West 62nd Street. La Pecora Bianca Lincoln Square is slated to open Monday, October 19, in the former Rosa Mexicano space. Owner Mark Barak confirmed the date. In a June Instagram post, the restaurant described two floors with an Amalfi Coast feel and called it the group's largest and most ambitious location.
2. 159 Columbus. Lucia Pizza, open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 10 p.m. on Sunday.
3. 186 Columbus, between West 68th and 69th. Edith's Sandwich Counter has leased 2,400 square feet in the former Francesco's Pizzeria. No opening date yet.
4. 221 Columbus, at West 70th. Mimi's Frozen Yogurt has signed for 4,200 square feet in a space that used to be an office. No opening date yet.
5. 311 Columbus. OSKA has announced it will close at the end of October.
6. 341 Columbus. Bacio di Latte is planned for the former Peruvian Connection space, with a summer 2027 opening reported.
7. 370 Columbus. Chip City closed on October 2.
8. 380 Columbus, between West 78th and 79th. Aperture has opened its new gallery and headquarters.
9. 520 Columbus, between West 85th and 86th. Good Enough to Eat served its final brunch on Sunday, August 30.

The arrivals cluster below West 71st Street. The losses run farther uptown, past 75th. CBRE's third-quarter 2026 Manhattan retail report counted 11 Upper West Side retail leases totaling 50,489 square feet that quarter, the second-highest leasing volume of any Manhattan neighborhood. Most of that activity was on Broadway and Columbus. Three of the quarter's food and drink deals named in the report are on Columbus: Mimi's, Edith's and a lease credited to Mermaid Inn.

Brands That Built a Line First

The newcomers have all done this before. I Love the Upper West Side traces Mimi's quick climb. Founder Amber Linz moved to New York in July 2024. She opened the first shop at 231 Lafayette Street in SoHo in August 2025 and a second at 84 University Place in Greenwich Village this past March. An Upper East Side location at 997 Lexington Avenue opened September 10, which makes Columbus the brand's fourth Manhattan shop and its second uptown. The format comes along unchanged. You build your own cup and pay by weight at $1.20 an ounce, so most cups land between $11 and $18. The base is Greek yogurt cut with milk, kefir and a little cane sugar, and the toppings rotate seasonally through the produce supplier Natoora.

Edith's took a similar route from Williamsburg. According to I Love the Upper West Side, founder Elyssa started it as a pop-up in 2020 and opened a standalone counter in spring 2021. Its scratch-made breakfast and lunch menu draws on family recipes and global Jewish cuisine. The menu item people know it for is the BEC&L, which is bacon, egg, latke and cheese.

La Pecora Bianca follows the same logic at a larger scale. The Lincoln Square menu hadn't been published as of the October 8 report, so the best preview is the group's existing pasta list: rigatoni vodka, gramigna, tagliatelle bolognese, whipped ricotta, meatballs and tiramisu. The group's biggest room is going in at the Lincoln Center end of the avenue.

The Operators Who Were Already Here

Neighborhood operators are part of this story too, and their moves point in a different direction.

Mermaid Inn shows how a restaurant can leave the area and come back. Its earlier Upper West Side location ran for 15 years at 570 Amsterdam Avenue near West 87th Street. It closed, and two years later Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith brought the restaurant back at 335 Columbus Avenue in October 2024, Eater reported. Now they've signed for a second space. Sources give its address two different ways. CBRE's report lists a 2,500-square-foot Mermaid Inn lease at 301 Columbus. An August report from I Love the Upper West Side describes Abrams and Smith leasing the former Patsy's at 61 West 74th Street, with 2,300 square feet plus a basement and no name or concept chosen yet. No opening date has been reported for either one.

Good Enough to Eat is closing, but its breakfast menu is moving a few blocks away. Carrie Levin opened the restaurant in 1981 on Amsterdam Avenue at West 83rd Street. It moved to Columbus in 2013 after she partnered with Jeremy Wladis to keep it going. Wladis told I Love the Upper West Side that the decision came down to a drop in business and not being able to agree on a new lease. West Side Rag reported that the farewell note posted inside the restaurant carried a second line:

"Our sister restaurant Fred's on Amsterdam Avenue & 83rd Street will serve the Good Enough to Eat breakfast menu."

Fred's now serves that menu Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It also opens at 9 a.m. on weekends instead of its usual 11 a.m., and it has added Good Enough to Eat favorites to its own menu. After 45 years, the breakfast menu is back on the block where it began.

Amsterdam is also where neighborhood operators are trying new concepts. Velvet Cowboy, a Western bar, opened September 29 at 509 Amsterdam Avenue. I Love the Upper West Side describes a concept inspired by the American Southwest and the 1970s, from Jacob Hadjigeorgis's Pickle Hospitality Group, the team behind Jacob's Pickles. A few blocks south, TALEA Beer Co. opened September 25 at 441 Amsterdam. Co-founders Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland told West Side Rag they wanted an inclusive, family-friendly taproom with food beyond beer snacks.

What a Storefront Costs Here

Rent explains part of why proven brands keep choosing the Upper West Side. CBRE's most specific figure for the neighborhood covers Broadway between West 72nd and 86th Streets, not Columbus. On that stretch, average asking rent was $250 per square foot in the third quarter of 2026, up from $248 in Q2 and $243 a year earlier. CBRE listed 14 direct ground-floor availabilities on the corridor. The average across Manhattan's 16 prime retail corridors that quarter was $707 per square foot, and corridor availabilities fell 11% from the previous quarter. So the Upper West Side's main shopping street costs roughly a third of the Manhattan prime average, while space across the city is getting harder to find. Side streets come in lower still. The August report put the former Patsy's lease on West 74th Street at $130 per square foot.

For a brand that already has lines in SoHo or Williamsburg, those numbers make an Upper West Side location easy to justify. For a single restaurant whose lease is up, rent is one pressure among several. Wladis named slower business alongside the lease when he explained Good Enough to Eat's closing.

The One Opening That Wants Your Memories

One upcoming arrival a short block from Columbus doesn't fit the pattern. It's a revival. Café des Artistes is set to return in early 2027 at 1 West 67th Street, the Hotel des Artistes space that housed the Leopard at des Artistes until February. I Love the Upper West Side reports that AirMax Hospitality, led by Ariel Arce and Max Katzenberg, will run it after the building's board selected the group. The restaurant first opened in 1917 as a dining room for artists whose studios had no kitchens. Howard Chandler Christy, an illustrator who lived in the building, began painting its murals of wood nymphs in 1934. In June, Katzenberg told Community Board 7 that the renovation would be purely cosmetic and that the murals would stay untouched. He described a French-American, à la carte restaurant serving lunch seven days a week from noon, with a last seating at 10:30 p.m.

Both partners have roots nearby. Katzenberg told the committee he was born at the Alden on West 82nd Street and Central Park West, and Arce celebrated her LaGuardia High School graduation at Café des Artistes. AirMax is now asking former diners, staff and neighbors to send stories, photos and mementos to [email protected], and says it will draw on those responses as the restaurant takes shape. No chef has been announced.

When a shopfront changes hands on your block, the Antigua Team keeps track of who's moving in, what they're paying and how it changes the street. If you'd like that block-by-block read of Columbus Avenue or any other corridor near you, request your Global VIP consultation.