Thomas Straker opens Straker's in New York this fall

Thomas Straker New York has a home: the London chef's debut restaurant, Straker's, opens this fall on Grand Street in Nolita, inside the former Lucky Strike space, part of a wave of British and European openings hitting the city this season.

The London chef built his following on Golborne Road in Notting Hill, then on TikTok, where his "All Things Butter" series turned a block of butter and a hot pan into a recurring internet event. Straker's New York outpost carries the same ingredient-led, unfussy style across the Atlantic rather than reinventing it for the market.

The menu draws on his cookbook, The Food You Want to Eat: whole roast chicken with butter beans and salsa verde, seasonal vegetables cooked simply, and, inevitably, a heavy hand with butter. Straker has said he designs dishes people will actually cook and order again, not ones built to photograph well once.

Food people will actually cook and order again, not just photograph once.

Notting Hill playbook, New York address

The original Straker's opened in west London in 2023 and expanded into a wider hospitality group under the same name. Taking on a former Lucky Strike site puts the New York room in a well-trodden Nolita corner that has cycled through several concepts over the past decade.

Straker joins a crowded autumn calendar of British and European chefs testing New York, a market where a strong opening week counts for little against six months of repeat bookings.

A season of transatlantic openings

Straker's arrives alongside other fall debuts, including Daniel Humm's return to the West Village and Japanese chain Sushiro's first US restaurant in Times Square, giving New Yorkers a fall dining season with very different price points and not much overlap in audience.

No opening date beyond "this fall" had been confirmed at the time of writing, standard practice for a chef better known for building anticipation slowly than rushing a soft launch. Bookings, when they open, are expected to move fast given the following his videos already command.