![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/fotWjM3v.jpeg\")
NoHo Hospitality co-founders Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard are 2026 Observer Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees. Quentin Bacon<\/p>\n\t\t\t\tNoHo Hospitality co-founders Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard are 2026 Observer Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees. Quentin Bacon<\/p>\n
Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard run NoHo Hospitality, a 23-venue group across New York and Detroit that the partners say serves roughly 35,000 covers a week. In Detroit, where NoHo operates four venues at the Shinola Hotel, Ostrom and Pickard opened Saksey\u2019s, a cocktail lounge, with Dan Gilbert\u2019s family last November. In September, the three partners teamed with Authentic Hospitality on Ray\u2019s Detroit, the two groups\u2019 first collaboration, and opened The Astor and a second Bar Torino inside The Public Theater in New York.<\/p>\n
The line at Lafayette\u2019s bakery can run half an hour, and its Supr\u00eame\u2014a circular, cream-filled croissant introduced in April 2022\u2014has been copied by bakeries from Singapore to London. Carmellini once found one on vacation in Costa Rica sold as a \u201cLafayette donut.\u201d Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi and David Chang worked under Carmellini at Caf\u00e9 Boulud before building Major Food Group and Momofuku.<\/p>\n
Carmellini, Ostrom and Pickard are 2026 Observer Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees. They spoke with Observer about the restaurant they nearly walked away from during the financial crisis and what Detroit demands that New York doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The Public relationship goes back to 1998, when Pickard helped launch Joe\u2019s Pub. What changes when you\u2019re feeding an audience at the Public Theater?<\/p>\n
Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard: With The Astor and Bar Torino, we\u2019ve been able to build on that relationship and create more opportunities for people to gather before or after a show.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting about hospitality in a theater is that you\u2019re often part of a much bigger experience. Many are coming to see a performance, celebrate an occasion or spend an evening out, and our role is to make the food and hospitality feel like a natural extension of that.<\/p>\n
What does running restaurants in Detroit demand that New York doesn\u2019t?<\/p>\n
Carmellini: Detroit actually came about through my partner Josh Pickard, who\u2019s from the city. When we first visited, I was really impressed by the local culinary community and the talented chefs already doing interesting things there.<\/p>\n
Pickard: Detroit teaches you the importance of community and relationships in a way that New York doesn\u2019t always. In New York, you have incredible density, constant foot traffic and an endless stream of new customers. In Detroit, you have to work harder to earn people\u2019s loyalty, and that loyalty is everything.<\/p>\n
Detroit also teaches you to be more resourceful, patient and thoughtful about what you\u2019re creating.<\/p>\n
The Supr\u00eame was being copied within weeks and eventually turned up around the world. How did you react?<\/p>\n
Carmellini and Ostrom: At first, we were upset about it. We had created something unique in its presentation, and within about 30 days, we started seeing other bakeries making their own versions. First California, then Japan and Korea, and within a year they were everywhere. We were seeing some of the most respected pastry chefs in France making them and calling them \u201cNew York rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n
But eventually we had to laugh about it. At the end of the day, someone came up with every dish that\u2019s now a staple on restaurant menus. Someone else invented the muffin, right? That\u2019s how food evolves\u2014chefs take inspiration from one another and put their own spin on things. What\u2019s strange now is just how quickly an idea can travel around the world with social media.<\/p>\n
Whipped ricotta has traveled, too. Where did the Locanda Verde version come from?<\/p>\n
Carmellini: Well, we didn\u2019t invent it, but it wasn\u2019t a thing that was around 25 years ago. It actually evolved from a picnic we made ourselves in Abruzzo in the \u201990s. We imported the ricotta from Sardinia. A special moment in time, so to speak.<\/p>\n
Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi and David Chang all came through your kitchens. Did you know what you had?<\/p>\n
Carmellini: I\u2019ve been fortunate to work with some incredibly talented people throughout my career, and it\u2019s always rewarding to see people you\u2019ve worked alongside go on to build something of their own.<\/p>\n
It also shows how competitive the business is, as those are only three names out of 10,000 that have passed through the ranks. There\u2019s no recipe for success, and it\u2019s not for the weak at heart. Some element of luck helps, along with talent.<\/p>\n
You waited more than 30 years to put your name on a restaurant. Why Caf\u00e9 Carmellini?<\/p>\n
Carmellini: For much of my career, I\u2019ve focused on creating more casual, approachable restaurants, from Locanda Verde and The Dutch to Bar Primi. I loved building those restaurants, but after spending the early part of my career in fine dining, working in some of the world\u2019s great kitchens, I realized how much I missed that style of cooking and hospitality.<\/p>\n
Caf\u00e9 Carmellini was an opportunity to return to those roots and bring together everything I\u2019ve learned over the past 30-plus years. It\u2019s really the culmination of my career, drawing on my classical French training, Italian heritage and the different cuisines and experiences that have influenced me along the way.<\/p>\n
Putting my name on the restaurant was also deeply personal. The Carmellini name is a tribute to my family\u2019s coffee-importing business, which operated in Tuscany for 120 years. Opening night, like all of our opening nights, was chaos, fun and utterly terrifying.<\/p>\n
You three have been partners for 17 years. How did the division of labor evolve as the company grew?<\/p>\n
Ostrom: AC and I had worked together for years before we started the company, and Josh came into the picture when we were putting together Locanda Verde in 2009. We didn\u2019t necessarily set out to build a restaurant group. We were just trying to open a restaurant together, and things grew from there. We\u2019ve always brought different strengths to the business.<\/p>\n
Carmellini: I\u2019m still the guy who wants to be in the restaurants. For a long time, I didn\u2019t even think we needed a corporate office. I thought we could just have meetings in the private dining rooms.<\/p>\n
Luke and Josh recognized that, as we grew, we needed a more formal structure.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the deal, lease or opening you almost walked away from?<\/p>\n
Ostrom: It was the end of 2008. The market crashed, and nobody knew what was coming for the city or for restaurants. I remember the night AC and I scoped out the former Ago space at The Greenwich Hotel. I think I literally saw a tumbleweed blow across North Moore.<\/p>\n
We knew that opening there meant ripping off the white tablecloths and leaning into something approachable, which felt like a massive leap of faith at that time. We had tons of uncertainty in those earlier days, which made it a tough call, and we came pretty close to walking away.<\/p>\n
But we did it: Locanda Verde.<\/p>\n
Whose restaurant would you take your toughest critic to, other than your own?<\/p>\n
Carmellini: I\u2019d take him to T\u00e9tou, which closed in Golfe-Juan but reopened in Cannes, France, so he could understand what a real bouillabaisse actually is.<\/p>\n
I often find critics don\u2019t understand the actual thing because they haven\u2019t traveled there to experience it, to understand its context in the place, its history, its flavor, its meaning. That goes for bouillabaisse, ph\u1edf Nam or a Salzburger Nockerl.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NoHo Hospitality co-founders Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard are 2026 Observer Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees. Quentin Bacon Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard run NoHo Hospitality, a 23-venue group across New York and Detroit that the partners say serves roughly 35,000 covers a week. In Detroit, where NoHo operates four<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45878,331,307,45879,370,3088,4360,364,45579,72,365,45596,667,1403,290,332,407,303,45880,389,408,68,682,45881],"class_list":["post-66460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-2026-nightlife-dining-power-list","tag-america-united-states","tag-andrew-carmellini","tag-authentic-hospitality","tag-david-chang","tag-detroit","tag-hospitality","tag-interviews","tag-josh-pickard","tag-lifestyle","tag-lifestyle-interviews","tag-luke-ostrom","tag-mario-carbone","tag-michigan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-dining","tag-nightlife-dining","tag-noho-hospitality","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-dining","tag-restaurants","tag-rich-torrisi","tag-the-public-theater"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117517273237800679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}