When Tribeca Citizen stopped by the new Blank Street on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Walker, a family was playing cards in the middle of the room. The shop takes up 2,900 square feet on the ground floor of 32 Avenue of the Americas, the 1932 Ralph Walker building that fills the whole block between Church, Sixth, Walker and Lispenard. It has a winding tiled entrance and several window seats.
That card game sums up Tribeca's mornings this fall. The neighborhood spent the last two years filling up with bagel counters, and at this point grabbing breakfast to go is the easy part. The best new morning places since September are built for sitting down. Meanwhile, a few long-running corner businesses closed or changed how they work.
Church Street, Block by Block
The bagel buildout is big enough that Tribeca Citizen tracks it under a running "Bagel Wars" tag. In September, one of the site's readers walked the length of Church Street and listed what each block would have once Ess-a-Bagel moves in.
"After Ess opens, I think that every block on Church Street from Park Place to Duane Street will have a bagel outlet (Dunkin, Ess, Dunkin, Nala's, Dunkin again, Modern)."
The reader's list ran in Tribeca Citizen's Ess-a-Bagel report. Ess-a-Bagel's new shop is on Murray between Broadway and Church. The family business has been around for 50 years, and it already runs a FiDi location just south of Zuccotti Park. By November 3, the Murray Street awning was up.
Away from Church Street, the map fills in just as much. Here is the lineup as of this fall:
| Shop | Where | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Zucker's | Chambers Street | The longtime Tribeca bagel shop, at its current Chambers space since 2023 |
| Pick-A-Bagel | Goldman breezeway | One of the long-standing bagel shops |
| Brooklyn Bread | Greenwich and Murray | One of the long-standing bagel shops |
| Tribeca Bagels | Canal Street | One of the long-standing bagel shops |
| Black Seed | Hudson Eats, Brookfield Place | One of the long-standing bagel shops |
| PopUp Bagels | 315 Greenwich at Reade | Opened in February, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily |
| Apollo Bagels | 121 Reade at Hudson, the former Kings space on Bogardus Plaza | Open seven days from 7 a.m. |
| Nala's Bagels | Church and Chambers | Moved here from its earlier Reade Street shop |
| Modern Bread & Bagel | 130 Duane at Church | Gluten-free, opened in September |
| Ess-a-Bagel | Murray between Broadway and Church | New location for the 50-year-old family business |
| Tompkins Square Bagels | Independence Plaza, Greenwich and Franklin | Avenue A shop from 2011 expanding to the Independence Plaza retail space |
With that many bagel counters, the openings that changed Tribeca's mornings this fall are the ones you can actually sit in.
The New Rooms Built for Staying
Blank Street, 32 Sixth Avenue at Walker. Blank Street started as a Brooklyn coffee cart in 2020. Its Church and Murray shop has been open since 2022, but that one is a stop on the way to somewhere else. The Sixth Avenue shop is a destination. Tribeca Citizen believes it is one of the chain's biggest in the city, and it is open 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. A large coffee is $2.95, a cappuccino $5.40 and a matcha latte $5.65. This location also launched an ice cream menu with four flavors: vanilla bean affogato, mocha, white chocolate matcha and strawberry shortcake matcha, each with a hard shell topping. Another Blank Street is on the way at West and Vesey.
Friedmans, 378 Greenwich at North Moore. The corner of Greenwich and North Moore sat empty for years before Caliza fit it out. Now the family behind Friedmans runs two restaurants there. Suram Sushi + Ramen opened in late August in the small side of the space that used to be Caliza's ice cream and takeout counter. Friedmans opened next door. It is the eighth Friedmans in the city, and the family opened its first one in Chelsea Market in 2009. In Tribeca Citizen's review, the restaurant comes across as a polished take on the diner, with plenty of booths, a bar running the full length of the south wall, a raised sidewalk cafe that is partly covered, and a private room in back behind sliding doors.
Friedmans matters for mornings because of its hours. It opens at 9 a.m. every day and serves breakfast and lunch all day: ricotta pancakes, avocado toast, chicken and waffles, BELTs. It closes at 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and at 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Prices are higher than at a typical diner. A Cobb salad is $22, roasted salmon $32 and a glass of wine $16. Every dish on the menu can be served gluten free, though the kitchen itself is not gluten free.
NowHere Cafe, 40 Lispenard near Church. According to Eater NY, this cafe opened on October 7 inside NowHere, a gallery that describes itself as a hub for New York City-based creators whose work is influenced by Japanese culture. The menu has coffee, matcha, hojicha and sobacha, with pastries from Patisserie Fouet and tamago sandos from Taku Sando, made with karashi mustard mayo on shokupan. NowHere Cafe is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Modern Bread & Bagel, 130 Duane at Church. This shop sits in the bagel table above, but it works more like a small cafe. Modern Bread & Bagel is inside the building that used to be the Duane Street Hotel and now operates as the Duane Hotel, and the shop flows right into the lobby. There are a few seats at the south end. The gluten-free menu goes well beyond bagels, with open-faced melts, a separate list of egg sandwiches, salads, smoked fish, signature lattes and packaged gluten-free cake mixes.
Between Modern Bread & Bagel and Friedmans, Tribeca now has two places within a few blocks of each other that can make a full gluten-free breakfast.
The Corners That Went Quiet
The new places mostly opened inside buildings and away from the busiest foot traffic. The closures hit long-held street corners.
The Starbucks at West Broadway and Chambers, on the ground floor of the Frederick Hotel, had a sign on its door announcing it would close on September 26. It had been there since 2000, right on top of the 1/2/3 subway stop, and the closing fit the chain's announced plan to shut 250 stores across North America. Starbucks still held an active lease on the space, and the hotel told Tribeca Citizen that several food-and-beverage operators were interested in it.
Chip City's shop at Greenwich and Duane, open since 2022, closed when the company shut every location for good.
Duane Park Patisserie changed form instead of closing. After 35 years on Duane Park, Madeline Lanciani's bakery closed its shop in June. Her team now bakes from Betty Bakery at 448 Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, making the flourless cakes, lemon tartes, coconut cakes, pies, scones and signature Ring Dings. Orders go through ringdingbar.com, and pickup on Duane Park runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon.
The Morning, by the Clock
Put together, the new openings stretch Tribeca's morning across more of the day and spread it over more of the neighborhood:
- 6:30 a.m. Blank Street at Sixth and Walker opens, with window seats and the same hours every day of the week.
- 7 a.m. PopUp Bagels at Greenwich and Reade and Apollo Bagels on Bogardus Plaza open, both seven days a week.
- 9 a.m. Friedmans opens a booth-filled dining room at Greenwich and North Moore, where breakfast runs until closing.
- 9 a.m. to noon, Saturdays only. Duane Park Patisserie's pickup window on the park it was named for.
- 11 a.m., Tuesday through Saturday. NowHere Cafe on Lispenard starts pouring hojicha and serving tamago sandos for a slower late morning.
On Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 26, Friedmans will serve a fixed-price turkey plate all day, starting at 11 a.m. Pie orders for Saturday pickup on Duane Park go through the patisserie's order site.
Evan Roth tracks how Tribeca's blocks are changing, from the new rooms at Sixth and Walker and at Greenwich and North Moore to the corner at West Broadway and Chambers. If those changes have you thinking about which block suits you best, Schedule a Private Consultation.
