Babbo

James Beard made a tradition of dining in this building every Christmas Eve, back when it was the Coach House, which Leon Lianides opened in 1949¹. The building dates to 1826, built along with its neighbor at 108 Waverly Place, and was once a carriage house for the Wanamaker department store family². The Coach House ran for 44 years and closed in 1993¹.

Mario Batali opened Babbo in 1998, and the next year it won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant, which kept the name in the building³. It held a Michelin star for several years and turned up in Bill Buford's book Heat³.

Batali sold his stake in 2019 after misconduct claims³. In February 2025 Stephen Starr bought Babbo and its sibling Lupa from the Bastianich family, and he brought back Mark Ladner, a chef from the 1998 opening team⁴. Babbo reopened eight months later, renovated, with a new owner, an old Babbo hand in the kitchen and, as The Infatuation put it, a fresh coat of paint^{3, 5}.