The Devil Is Prada: Luxury Brand May Push Out Longtime Soho Restaurant

For the past couple of months, rumors swirled that Lure Fishbar at 142 Mercer Street and Prince Street was in danger of closing as it could be pushed out by fashion icon Prada, its Soho neighbor, reported Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me Substack. While it appears to be true, details are still fuzzy, even to Lure restaurateur John McDonald.

As longtime restaurants fall like dominoes due to the shuffling of real estate acquisitions, Lure Fishbar is fighting off this fate: After 20 years in business, the mainstay might be pushed out by one of the very businesses Lure lured to the area when it first transformed a neighborhood basement.

“Prada is opening a restaurant in Soho,” reads the December 14 Feed Me Substack headline. The text exchange with Sundberg’s source suggests that the Prada-owned Pasticceria Marchesi, originally from Milan that first opened in 1824, could perhaps move into the space, but there’s no confirmation at the moment.

The Soho Prada footprint used to be the Guggenheim Soho; Prada is currently the whole floor above Lure and half the floor around it, the New York Post reported. Palm Beach billionaire and art collector Peter Brant has been McDonald’s landlord; he owns the lease for the whole building. Prada is apparently buying the building’s lease from Brant, says McDonald. The restaurateur also says he’s received minimal communication from either party. Eater has reached out to both Prada and Brant for additional information.

McDonald tells Eater that Lure Fishbar’s lease is set to end in mid-2026, and his landlord may well force his restaurant to shut down or relocate to give the space over to Prada, though he says he intends to fight to keep Lure Fishbar alive. He’s starting by informing his high-profile regulars like ex-Gawker’s Scott Kidder, Chris Rock, Katie Couric, Michael Ovitz (co-founder of Hollywood’s CAA talent agency), Arianna Huffington, Jeffrey Deitch, and Nicole Miller, who may perhaps speak out on the restaurant’s behalf.

“Lure is my home away from home,” Ken Burns, legendary filmmaker of documentaries on the Vietnam War, jazz, baseball, and the Brooklyn Bridge, told Eater. The New Hampshire resident owns an apartment in Soho and spends time each month in Manhattan, often with his family. When he’s in New York, “rarely a week goes by that I’m not there,” he says of the Soho hotspot. It’s where his daughters and grandchildren have held birthday parties and celebrations, he says, and lamented the rumored fate of the place. “I hope Prada has the sense to know what an institution this is for Manhattan.”

If the rumors are true, the Prada restaurant would make the luxury fashion brand the latest to open a Manhattan spot, following in the footsteps of Louis Vuitton and Armani/Ristorante this year.

McDonald, who recently partnered with Nom Wah’s Wilson Tang to open Cha Cha Tang in the West Village, owns several Manhattan establishments including Smyth Tavern in Tribeca and Bowery Meat Company. Lure’s chef Preston Clark, the son of the first Black chef in America to win a James Beard Award, has carved out his own legacy at the restaurant.

Now that the building’s lease is changing hands, McDonald’s work has begun to pressure Prada to allow Lure Fishbar to stay at the address.

“Too often there’s a bloodthirstiness in real estate,” says Burns, citing a handful of his favorite restaurants that have shuttered since he first started coming to New York in the 1970s. “That doesn’t need to happen here.”