Quick Bites
- Ilis (Greenpoint) — Mads Refslund’s Michelin-decorated tasting-menu room at 150 Green Street is closing after service on May 28. Building was sold, lease lost. Pop-ups planned while the team hunts a new home.
- Fireboat (Brooklyn Heights) — The Grand Banks team has launched their Caribbean-tinged bar inside a decommissioned FDNY fireboat at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Frozen cocktails pour from the original hose connectors.
- Phê (Chinatown) — The Mắm team’s bánh mì cafe at 72 Forsyth Street is still in soft-open mode, with the full menu inching closer to debut.
Brooklyn: A heavyweight closure on the waterfront
The biggest story in NYC food this weekend is north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Ilis, the ambitious Greenpoint restaurant from former Noma co-founder Mads Refslund, confirmed it will serve its last dinner on May 28. The reason is the most New York reason possible: the building at 150 Green Street was sold and the tenants lost their leases. Less than three years after opening with serious hype and a Michelin nod, the room — known for its theatrical fire-and-ice tasting menu — is winding down with a Tuesday-through-Saturday dinner schedule until the lights go out. Refslund has told reporters he is hunting for a new space and plans pop-ups in the meantime.
On the lighter end of the Brooklyn waterfront, Fireboat has officially settled into Pier 6 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Grand Banks crew — the same operators behind the Pilot schooner at Pier 6 and the original Grand Banks oyster boat in Tribeca — converted a decommissioned FDNY fireboat into a seasonal bar with Caribbean-leaning bites. The party piece is the cocktail program: frozen drinks pour through the boat’s original fire cannons and hose connectors. It’s an easy walk from the Brooklyn Bridge Park entrance off Atlantic Avenue and Furman Street, and a logical stop on any Pier 6 afternoon.
Manhattan: Phê inches forward, Health Department keeps quiet
In Chinatown, Phê, the bánh mì cafe spinoff from the team behind Mắm, continues a slow soft open at 72 Forsyth Street. The shop has been running limited sandwich service while the full menu rolls out. If you’re walking the Forsyth-Eldridge stretch around lunch, it’s worth a look to see what’s actually being served on any given day — the team has been transparent that things are still in shakedown mode.
On the Health Department side, the past weekend was quieter than recent weeks: the city’s inspection sweeps yielded fewer headline-grade Manhattan shutters than the eight-restaurant Mother’s Day-week stretch flagged earlier this month. The 2026 running total of Manhattan restaurants closed by inspectors for sanitary violations now sits at eight, per ABCEats.
Queens & the Bronx: Largely steady
No major confirmed openings or permanent closings out of Queens or the Bronx made the wires over the past 48 hours. The most-watched Queens story remains the slow-moving rollout of new spots along the Roosevelt Avenue corridor, but nothing flipped the open/closed switch this weekend.
What to watch this week
If you’ve been meaning to eat at Ilis, your booking window is now a 10-day countdown — Tuesday through Saturday only. If you’re a Brooklyn Bridge Park regular, Fireboat is the new excuse to walk down the Pier 6 promenade after work. And Phê remains the place to drop in on the way through Chinatown if you want to say you ate the bánh mì before the doors officially opened.
Sources: Eater NY on Ilis closure; Greenpointers on Ilis; The Infatuation on Fireboat; The Infatuation on Phê; PIX11 on Manhattan inspection closures.
