Everyone Loves a New Kid in Town

In the space formerly occupied by longtime local darling Salt Tavern, which closed in 2018, Marta opened this week. With simple and classically adorned tables, custom tile work, tons of natural light, the restaurant is lovely. I stopped in and sat at the bar for a cocktail – negroni, no spagliato – and enjoyed a little respite at the end of a long day. It was 4:30, I was in between lunch and dinner service for food. I will go for a meal soon, but I’ll wait a few weeks, as I always do.

Everyone is always so excited for a new restaurant, especially in residential neighborhoods, I get it. It’s exciting! People flock to new places as soon as they open…this can be tricky. For me, I’d much rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. It takes months for new restaurants to get into their groove, but within about a month, they’ve usually worked out major kinks. So, about a month in, I’m usually ready to check out a new place.

Lots of new projects are coming down the pike and if you’re reading my newsletter, you are aware of most of them. I’ve never been a huge newsletter reader, but I am slowly becoming one, especially if the person writing it is good at keeping the information organized and succinct. I try to do that with my newsletter. I’m up to a respectable number of subscribers and my open rate is high, consistently above 60%. I started writing it at the height of restaurant pivots resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic (which is STILL affecting restaurants, fyi) and while I wrote it every Sunday for a year and a half, I now write about every 4-6 weeks. That way, I have a lot of news to share. HERE is a link to sign up.

There are a lot of new places that have either opened recently or are opening soon (and soon-ish). A few I’ve written about and a few I’ve not covered yet:

Marta and all of these places should be on your radar. Please remember to keep an open mind and be extra patient and kind when visiting new places.