Group Behind LA Hit Mother Wolf Is Opening an NYC Restaurant

Eater

5 days ago

is a born-and-raised New Yorker who is an editor for Eater's Northeast region and Eater New York, was the former Eater Austin editor for 10 years, and often writes about food and pop culture.
The Los Angeles hospitality group behind chef Evan Funke's hit Italian spot, Mother Wolf, is going to be opening a new restaurant in New York City. Ten Five signed a 15-year lease on the ground floor of 125 West 57th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It's a mixed-use development in the heart of Midtown's so-called Billionaires' Row, where the restaurant will take up 7,045 square feet on the ground floor, as first reported by the New York Post.
Ten Five's managing partner, Dan Daley, said via a rep for the building's developers, 'We're excited to bring a new concept to this incredibly dynamic part of the city and to contribute to the continued evolution of this iconic corridor,' he wrote, describing it as 'a considered and ambitious project.'
Ten Five's chief marketing officer, Kim Walker, writes to Eater that there are 'no further details to share,' but that the team is 'excited about the new space.' Eater has reached out to Funke to see if he is involved.
Ten Five's first Los Angeles restaurants were coastal Mexican restaurant Ka'teen and rooftop bar Desert 5 Spot in 2021, inside the Tommie Hotel. Those were followed by Bar Lis in 2022, and French restaurant Mes Amis followed in 2022, both in the Thomson Hotel.
But it wasn't until Ten Five debuted Mother Wolf in 2022, where Funke focuses on Roman-style Italian cuisine and especially his pastas, that they had a spot that received outsized culinary attention and celebrity patronage. At the time, Los Angeles Times critic Bill Addison described the spaghettone alla gricia as a 'pork-besotted masterpiece,' and was taken with 'all'amatriciana's potent mix of tomato and guanciale fused onto curving rigatoni.' Building on Mother Wolf's success, the group expanded with offshoots in Miami and Las Vegas.
A rendering of 125 West 57th's entrance. Rendering: Neoscape
Not all of their ventures have worked out. The company opened an LA-style British pub, the Chap, but closed it a year later, in 2023, in the middle of the company's lawsuit with then-partnering development company Relevant Group.
This new, unnamed NYC restaurant isn't Ten Five's first venture into the five boroughs. Back in 2024, the group expanded Desert 5 Spot, a western-themed bar with bull riding, into Williamsburg.
125 West 57th is going to be a high-priced, fancy 30-story building run by real estate developers Alchemy-ABR Investment Partners and Cain International.
The address had been home to the Calvary Baptist Church, dating back to the late 1800s, dubbed a 'skyscraper church.' As part of this new development, the church will reopen, occupying the second through 10th floors. The overall space is scheduled to open after Labor Day in September, per the Post.
It's down the street from another big Midtown restaurant in the works. Over at 9 West 57th Street, Billy Durney and the team behind Kent Hospitality Group are working on their spot.