Café des Artistes, the Upper West Side restaurant that closed in 2009 after more than 90 years in business, is coming back. And the team reviving it is asking anyone who ever ate, worked, or celebrated there to help shape what it becomes.
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Café des Artistes will reopen in early 2027 at 1 West 67th Street, in the Hotel des Artistes space that housed the Leopard at des Artistes until February, according to Eater. It’ll be run by AirMax Hospitality, the group led by Ariel Arce and Max Katzenberg, whose restaurants include Tokyo Record Bar, Roscioli NYC, Pearl Box, Leonessa, and Big Pearl Caviar. The team told Eater that the Hotel des Artistes board selected the group after searching for a new operator.Now they’re turning to the public. An ad set to run in the New York Times on Sunday, September 27, invites former diners, staff, neighbors, and anyone else with a connection to Café des Artistes to send in stories, photos, and other mementos. Submissions can also be emailed to memories@cafedesartistesnyc.com. AirMax says it’ll draw on those responses as the restaurant takes shape.
The pair first surfaced at the address in June, when Katzenberg went before Community Board 7 for a liquor license under the name Air Cafe LLC. At the time, he described a French-American-inspired, à la carte fine-dining restaurant serving lunch seven days a week starting at noon, with a last seating at 10:30 p.m. He told the committee the renovation would be purely cosmetic and that Howard Chandler Christy’s famed murals would stay untouched, adding that he’d love to track down earlier murals removed from the space decades ago and bring them back. The committee approved the application unanimously.
Both partners have roots nearby. Katzenberg told the committee he was born at the Alden on West 82nd Street and Central Park West. Arce grew up in Hell’s Kitchen and celebrated her graduation from LaGuardia High School at Café des Artistes, according to Eater. The two became business partners in 2023.
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The original Café des Artistes opened in 1917 on the ground floor of the Hotel des Artistes, an apartment building built for artists, many of whose studios had no kitchens. What started as a dining room for residents eventually became a destination for performers, musicians, writers, and artists drawn to nearby Lincoln Center. Christy, an illustrator who lived in the building, began painting the restaurant’s murals of wood nymphs in 1934. The restaurant’s best-known era began in 1975, when Hungarian-born restaurateur George Lang and his wife, Jenifer, took over, serving signature dishes like salmon four ways, pot-au-feu, and tarte à l’oignon. Lang closed the restaurant in 2009, and two years later Gianfranco and Paula Sorrentino reopened the space as the Leopard at des Artistes, which ran for 15 years until closing earlier this year. The murals stayed on the walls through it all.A chef for the new Café des Artistes hasn’t been announced yet.
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