Openings: Gem Home and Elbow Bread

"Opened recently in Nolita by Flynn McGarry—who launched his first restaurant as a teen in 2018 and later a wine bar—this multiuse spot functions as part café, part grocery and part home-goods shop focused on vintage wares personally selected by the owner. Intentionally not a restaurant, it houses ovens and cooks behind a wall while the room itself was designed and outfitted with owner-built woodwork and long candlelit communal tables that evoke a boarding-school dining hall; the space can also serve for private dining and pop-ups. The bakery case offers morning pastries (black-cardamom buns, chanterelle-caraway rolls, a gently sweet parsnip cake) and, around 11:30, sandwiches built on that morning’s focaccia—chewy, spotted, cut into large two-handed squares and sold until they sell out with no substitutions. Standout sandwiches mentioned include a vibrant smoked-trout dip with watercress and marinated Sun Gold tomatoes, and another with salty speck, very spicy pickled peppers and an orange squash-and-butter spread; fillings are intended to rotate seasonally. A front refrigerator sells components and condiments (marinated broccoli rabe, anchovies, sunflower-seed barley miso, ají dulce hot sauce with nasturtium), and the shop also stocks groceries like premium raisins, bins of flowers and eucalyptus, orchard fruit and root vegetables alongside antique tableware and housewares the owner sources." - Tammie Teclemariam