London chef Thomas Straker brings Straker’s to the former Lucky Strike in SoHo

Thomas Straker is a London chef with more than 2 million followers on both Instagram and TikTok. On Saturday, Oct. 10, he opened Straker’s at 59 Grand St. in SoHo. The restaurant is at the corner of West Broadway, in the space that used to be Lucky Strike.

The renovation finished about a year late and roughly $2 million over budget. The opening comes as Straker’s British butter, a big part of his brand, is now sold in Whole Foods stores across the country. He is also known for his cooking videos and a cookbook.

Why Thomas Straker chose New York

Straker holds a U.S. passport because he was born in Washington, D.C. Growing the brand overseas appealed to him more than adding similar places at home or expanding to another city in the U.K. In his view, New Yorkers dine out far more often than Londoners, who might eat at a restaurant twice a week. “If you do something that has an appeal, you can almost guarantee you’re going to be busy,” he said.

What’s on the menu at Straker’s in SoHo

The menu will look almost the same as in London, but with more local ingredients. Straker wants to use fish caught on the East Coast. That means striped bass instead of sea bass, and possibly Maine lobster. He has also visited dairy farms in Connecticut. The kitchen will still cook with his own British butter, which is churned the traditional way from the milk of grass-fed cows.

One London dish is definitely coming over: a mussel flatbread. Its dough cold-ferments for 48 hours. The cooks simmer mussels in wine, reduce the stock and turn it into a chile butter. That butter goes on the dough with chopped mussels and whole ones, and the flatbread bakes in a wood oven. Straker sees it as a hot bread-and-butter course to eat with a couple of drinks.

Straker says his approach is to change an ingredient as little as possible while making it exceptional. He asks his cooks to question every item on a plate and why it is there. The SoHo staff was hired in New York.