To anyone tired of choosing between a $15 slop bowl and a $50 sit-down lunch in Lower Manhattan, the chef Andy Baraghani has something to say: Ditto.
More than just casual consensus, Ditto is the name of Baraghani’s first dining establishment, which is set to open later this month on 16th Street, just off Union Square, in the space formerly occupied by Agnès B. On a Monday morning in late August, Ditto was less a restaurant than an active construction site. As he dodged members of the crew, Baraghani pointed out what still needed to be installed before the restaurant’s opening on Sept. 30: a drinks rail, shelving in a retail area, a cluster of two-tops, a banquette, a metal-padded vestibule, mirrors near the kitchen. In other words, almost everything.
After a quick tour, the eternally vexing question loomed: Where could we go for a coffee, and sit at a table, amid a comfortable atmosphere, for more than a couple of minutes? Across the street, the cafe was closed for breakfast service. The bakery was too boisterous. Baraghani, 36, looked up and down the block, ran through a mental index of nearby options, came up empty and said, “This is why I’m opening up a restaurant,” something he swore he’d never do.
When Michael Silber, a consultant turned restaurateur, approached him about a restaurant concept a couple of years ago, Baraghani’s definitive answer was no. His star was solidly ascendant in the food world without the baggage of a full-time kitchen. Silber met Baraghani at a party celebrating the chef’s debut cookbook, “The Cook You Want to Be,” which won a James Beard Award and a place on the New York Times best-seller list. Baraghani had built a devoted audience while working in Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen from 2015 to 2021, just as food videos were exploding in popularity.
“His timing was unbelievable,” said Christine Muhlke, a writer and culinary consultant who was the executive editor of Bon Appétit when Baraghani arrived. The Test Kitchen job required the candidate be a good cook, a good writer and a good recipe writer whose food connected with the food world at large, plus a new twist: natural on-camera charisma.
Skilled and humble, with a knack for flavors, Baraghani became a fan favorite. Out Magazine declared him “the Internet Boyfriend of Our Dreams” in 2020. His videos for classic ratatouille and crispy saffron rice cake have upward of a million views. (Baraghani is now a contributor to The Times.)
Baraghani wasn’t just a photogenic guy with above-average knife skills. He had earned the accolades. Growing up in Berkeley, Calif., the son of Iranian immigrants, he was interested in food from a young age. When his uncle told him Chez Panisse, considered one of the best restaurants in the world, was nearby, a 16-year-old Baraghani talked his way into an internship in the kitchen.
“I’m like, Look, I’ll come Fridays after school and Saturdays. The restaurant is closed on Sundays,” Baraghani said. “I just wanted to behave like a sponge.” He absorbed everything he could from the chefs Alice Waters, Beth Wells and Cal Peternell, and took it to New York. After college at N.Y.U., he worked prep at Frej and as a line cook at Estela.
When he left kitchens for media, he had no intention of going back. The digital landscape was kind. Brands loved him. Today, his Instagram feed is full of partner posts with Chanel, Dior, Bottega Veneta, Chase Sapphire, Banana Republic, Audi, San Pellegrino and Macallan. He has a multibook deal with Penguin Random House.
Silber put the idea of a restaurant on the table over a series of coffee, breakfast and lunch meetings. At first, their references diverged. Silber, who was then the chief financial officer of the global consulting behemoth McKinsey & Company, was thinking Cafe Luxembourg, Prune and Chez Panisse. Baraghani wanted something more democratic, “where we really can get people in, no reservations, keep it under $30, ideally,” he said.
This was the kind of place he enjoyed when he moved to New York 18 years ago. Back then, he was obsessed with City Bakery, Maury Rubin’s daytime Union Square institution from 1990 to 2019, famed for its pretzel croissant, hot chocolate and salad bar. Its sleek industrial interior and brownies provided the backdrop for a scene in “Sex and the City.”
“The food was good enough,” Baraghani said. “But it was also a place where you saw a range of characters. You saw fashion people; you saw marketing people; you saw construction workers, cooks, students, professors.”
Ditto is envisioned as an all-day cafeteria but better, with good food and good design, not expensive but not cheap, that will draw a cross section of New Yorkers. The name and concept are meant to evoke a place on which everyone can agree.
“We’re constantly asking ourselves, ‘Where do we want to eat?’ No one seems to know where they want to go,” said Michael Scanlon, the chief creative officer of the branding agency Chandelier. In the age of reservation sites like Resy, the options are overwhelming, the good spots are impossible to get into, the average check is higher than your Con Ed bill.
“It’s the platonic deal of a restaurant,” Scanlon said. “Like, Where do you want to go, Ditto? Ditto.” Under the creative direction of Scanlon and the interior designer Eric Wink — both close friends of Baraghani’s since college — Ditto’s aesthetic is the quintessence of a stylish boy kitchen, kitted out in metallic industrial fixtures, white tile and a dusty mineral blue palette.
To start, Ditto will offer breakfast and lunch service. Dinner is on the back burner for now. The menu is still in development and will reflect Baraghani’s signatures: vegetable-heavy, high acid, lots of herbs — “maybe too much for some people,” he said — with heat and Persian influences. He’s been testing a breakfast roll based on lahmajoun, an Armenian flat bread; a sandwich with garlicky feta, herb pickled salad and kuku sabzi, a Greek-Persian herb frittata; a spicy tahini chicken sandwich; and a masa harina and tahini cookie.
Silber may prove to be Ditto’s most valuable secret ingredient. Since retiring from the financial consulting business in 2023, he has a new plan. “I made a very clear decision that my future was in food, starting in downtown Manhattan, and that it would be as an operator,” Silber said.
A lifelong New Yorker and food lover, he wanted to build a network in the industry. His first step was to invest in young restaurateurs building something unfussy but alluring in Covid’s wake. It turned out he had a nose for it. His stakes in Raf’s, Penny and Smithereens led to Borgo, Dean’s, Lonnies, Crevette and Bistrot Ha.
“He basically has a murderer’s row of the best New York City openings of the last two to three years,” Muhlke said.
Ditto is the first restaurant in which Silber is an operator and a 50-50 co-owner, with Baraghani. Silber read his cookbook cover to cover. He’s made Baraghani’s plum and pistachio cake 67 times. “It’s just extremely autobiographical, charming and captivating,” he said. “You fall in love with the man and the view on hospitality.”
The restaurant business in New York is known to be particularly grueling. “It’s sort of like, Which way would you rather throw away your money, investing in a Broadway musical or opening a restaurant?” Muhlke said.
To that Silber said: “I was a studio art major at Wesleyan who became the chief financial officer of McKinsey. Don’t get in my way when I decide to do something.”
The post He Swore He Would Never Open a Restaurant appeared first on New York Times.
