Over the past 17 years, Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom, and Josh Pickard have built NoHo Hospitality into a portfolio of 23 venues operating across New York and Detroit, launching influential culinary trends along the way. Yet their sprawling enterprise nearly failed to launch before it began. At the end of 2008, with the broader market in free fall, Carmellini and Ostrom scouted the former Ago space at the Greenwich Hotel and came close to walking away from the deal. Ostrom recalled seeing a tumbleweed blow across North Moore Street. Despite the bleak economic outlook, they took the space anyway, discarded the white tablecloths, and opened Locanda Verde in 2009 with Pickard joining shortly afterward as a third partner.
That initial gamble set off a wave of enduring and viral dining trends. Among them is the ubiquity of whipped ricotta, which the group cites as a day-one staple at Locanda Verde. Carmellini does not claim sole invention of the dish, tracing its origins instead to a picnic the team put together in Abruzzo during the 1990s using ricotta imported from Sardinia. More recently, the group spawned the viral New York roll—a circular, cream-filled croissant that originated as the Suprême at Lafayette in April 2022. The pastry has since been copied by bakeries worldwide, from London and Singapore to California, Japan, and Korea, with Carmellini once encountering a copy on vacation in Costa Rica sold under the name Lafayette donut. Although the partners admitted they were initially upset by the widespread copying, they ultimately conceded that someone else originally invented the standard muffin, too.
This year, the partners expanded their footprint across both New York and Detroit while maintaining the established neighborhood anchors that cemented their reputation. These include Locanda Verde—which has been co-owned by Robert De Niro since 2009—the all-American oyster room The Dutch, which opened in 2011, Lafayette, which launched in 2013, and the pasta-focused Bar Primi, which followed in 2014. Their flagship establishment is Café Carmellini at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which opened in 2023 as Carmellini’s first namesake restaurant. After years spent building casual rooms, he designed the space as a deliberate return to the rigorous fine dining environment where he trained. The restaurant’s name honors his family’s coffee importing business, which operated in Tuscany for 120 years. Opening night, Carmellini recalled, was absolute chaos, fun, and utterly terrifying.
The group’s expansion into Detroit materialized largely through Pickard, who is a native of the city. Noting that Detroit requires a greater effort to earn local loyalty, Pickard emphasized that once earned, that loyalty is everything. In Detroit, where the partners already operate four venues at the Shinola Hotel, they recently added Saksey’s, a speakeasy cocktail lounge, and Gilly’s Clubhouse, a sports entertainment venue. In September, they partnered with Authentic Hospitality to open Ray’s Detroit, a local watering hole designed with a strong emphasis on welcoming patrons. Back in New York, two new locations at the Public Theater demonstrated the co-founders’ strategy of extending successful brand identities while cultivating new ones: a second outpost of the all-day Italian café Bar Torino, and The Astor, a downtown tavern that replaced The Library on September 15. Both venues extend an institutional relationship dating back to Joe’s Pub, with the partners viewing dinner or a drink as a natural extension of a night out at the theater.
The operation now handles approximately 35,000 covers a week across its entire portfolio, drawing crowds so substantial that the line outside Lafayette’s bakery can run up to half an hour. Despite the corporate scale of the business, Carmellini still prefers working on the floor. He once figured the group could hold its business meetings inside their private dining rooms, but it was Ostrom and Pickard who pushed to establish a formal corporate office as the portfolio grew. Beyond their own dining rooms, Carmellini’s kitchens have served as a rigorous training ground for some of the industry’s most prominent figures, including Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and David Chang, all of whom worked under Carmellini when he served as executive chef at Café Boulud. Acknowledging the punishing nature of the work, Carmellini noted that those are only three names out of 10,000 who have passed through the ranks, adding that the high-pressure environment is not for the weak at heart.
