SoHo in Spring: What We're Enjoying Right Now in the Neighborhood

Happy spring in SoHo! As we enjoy SoHo sunset amidst the cast-iron facades and cobblestone streets we all love, I wanted to share a few things worth knowing about the neighborhood this season: for my friends already living there, those thinking about calling it home, or just visitors passing through!

The new dining lineup is the strongest in years.

Two openings recently are defining the moment SoHo is having. Or’esh arrived in February at 450 West Broadway from Catch Hospitality, with Michelin-starred chef Nadav Greenberg and a Rockwell Group interior built around a custom charcoal grill. About seventy percent of the menu touches live fire. Reservations drop daily on DoorDash, and the dress code is smart elegant. This is a special spot, and very hot right now.

Dean’s opened at the end of March at 213 Sixth Avenue, on the southwest corner of King Street and Sixth. Annie Shi and Jess Shadbolt designed it as a proper British seafood pub, named for a dayboat fisherman in Shadbolt’s hometown of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Thirty-eight seats, walk-ins welcomed at the bar, Guinness poured properly. Eater added it to their best-of-SoHo list within weeks of opening. Worth adding to your pub crawl.

Two more to watch. Selene by Kyma is bringing Mediterranean seafood to the ModernHaus SoHo, with a retractable-roof atrium that should be one of the best summer rooms downtown. Thomas Straker, the London chef with the cult following, is taking over the former Lucky Strike space on Grand Street. Both expected to open later this year.

Classics always worth revisiting. 

The standbys are having their own moment. Raoul’s, the Prince Street bistro that has been running since 1975, marked its 50th anniversary last year with a documentary that premiered at Tribeca and a packed celebration hosted by Chloë Sevigny and Lauren Santo Domingo. The room itself has barely changed in fifty years, which is most of the point. A few blocks east, Keith McNally’s memoir I Regret Almost Everything came out in 2025, and the launch dinner was held, naturally, at Balthazar. Expect the room to be busier than usual through the spring.

Blue Ribbon Brasserie is still going strong after thirty-plus years. Fanelli has not stopped serving since 1847; and Sadelle’s, Roscioli, Lucky’s, and Bar Mercer round out the best-of-the-best rotation. You still can’t go wrong with any of these.

Renewed retail and real estate reinvestment.

High-end tenants continue their commitment to SoHo. John Hardy opened a notable new flagship at 147 Spring Street in April. The MoMA Design Store unveiled a new installation by the artist Nina Chanel Abney, a useful reminder that SoHo’s commercial and cultural life still coexist. Institutional capital is quietly returning to the corridor’s retail real estate, as Thor Equities repurchased the retail space it formerly owned at 440 Broadway, suggesting smart money sees wisdom in continuing to invest in the neighborhood. SoHo is blossoming in more ways than one this spring season.

The neighborhood’s long arc still holds.

What gives SoHo its character is the same thing that has given it character for nearly sixty years. Paula Cooper opened the first gallery in the neighborhood in October 1968, at 96 Prince Street, next door to Fanelli’s. The art world built itself around her. Donald Judd bought 101 Spring Street that same year, and the Judd Foundation now stewards the building as part of the SoHo Arts Network, which also includes The Drawing Center, the Swiss Institute, and apexart.

Current programming in the neighborhood is worth knowing about. Hauser & Wirth at 134 Wooster, in a former Gagosian space, opens Allison Katz: Outta the Bag on April 30 and runs it through July 24. The Drawing Center has Ceija Stojka: Making Visible on view through June 7. Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room, the long-term land art installation that has sat quietly at 141 Wooster since 1977, remains free and open. And NYCxDesign returns to the SoHo Design District in mid-May, with programming across the corridor.

SoHo continues to impress as it reinvents itself amid the classic culture and street vibes that make it one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods. The cast iron architecture is the same. The loft inventory is the same. The galleries and design studios that gave SoHo its identity are still here, even as the storefronts cycle. That underlying fabric is what continues to draw the buyers we work with most often. They are looking for a neighborhood with substance, and SoHo still offers it.

If you’re interested in calling SoHo home, or have a recent recommendation you would like to share with me, feel free to email me at hdomi@heatherdomi.com, or give me a call at (917) 267-8012.