Daddy Yankee restaurant Cholapink sets 28 October opening

The Daddy Yankee restaurant Cholapink opens on Wednesday 28 October at 32 Spring Street in Manhattan, with Lima chef Jaime Pesaque running a fast-casual menu built around anticuchos, the grilled skewers of Peruvian street food.

The co-founders announced the date this week, and the reggaeton artist repeated it on Instagram. The room has 60 seats and will open daily from 11:30 to 23:00. The founders place it in SoHo; city listings put that stretch of Spring Street in Nolita. It joins a city whose top tables we track in our list of the best restaurants in New York.

Pesaque is the chef behind Mayta, in Lima's Miraflores district, which ranked No. 39 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025 and No. 11 on the Latin America list the same year. Anyone who has eaten from the street grills in our guide to what to eat in Lima will recognise the format, if not every glaze.

The bet is the format: anticuchos as a quick lunch, not as one course of a tasting menu.

What the Daddy Yankee restaurant will serve

Diners pick their own skewers, sides and sauces. The announced anticuchos are chicken thigh glazed with miso and ají mirasol; beef steak with smoked ají panca, huancaína sauce and chimichurri; and pork belly with sweet-and-sour rocoto and pineapple chutney. A fish of the day comes with ají amarillo and yuzu aioli, and the plant-based option is mushrooms with peanut, ají panca and an emulsion of Peruvian herbs.

Around the grill sit a house ceviche cured in leche de tigre, arroz chaufa and creamy corn with huancaína. Drinks include an iced tea of muña and mint with cacao fruit and apple, and a Pisco Sour Cholapink made with lime, orange bitters and pink sugar. No prices had been published by 24 October.

The name refers to the fuchsia of the polleras, the layered skirts worn by Andean women, and the interior mixes wood, stone, corrugated metal and pink microcement. “I always look for the chance to eat Peruvian food when I'm on tour,” Daddy Yankee said in the opening announcement.

From a Mexican pitch to a Peruvian grill

The project did not start out Peruvian: Pesaque told Peruvian media earlier this year that a British investment group first wanted a Mexican concept fronted by a Latin artist, and that Daddy Yankee asked for Peruvian food instead. Early reports pointed to September.

The format is the bet: anticuchos sold as a quick lunch rather than as one course of a ten-course tasting menu, as at Mayta. Whether a famous name keeps 60 seats full after the first month is another matter. The opening comes a week before The World's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, which lands in Lima on 4 November.