When many restaurateurs discuss new openings, it may sound like wide-eyed optimism. In any case, as many as 30 % of eating places will shut inside their first 12 months, with 60 to 80 % unlikely to hit the five-year mark. However when Ravi DeRossi talks about new eating places, it sounds extra like persistence—a selection to remain in a enterprise below stress, even when that stress is unbearably restrictive.
Al-Andalus
DeRossi is co-founder and CEO of Overthrow Hospitality, the New York restaurant group behind a string of vegan ideas starting from a mushroom-themed restaurant to a ”vegetable bar” and a Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded pure wine bar. Its latest ventures, the Decrease East Facet stunner Al-Andalus, attracts inspiration from Sixteenth-century Andalusian delicacies, whereas Lengthy Rely expands the group’s wine bar theme. However throughout all areas, DeRossi spirits a course of pushed by instinct, collaboration, and a willingness to construct in unsure instances.
The vegan restaurant downturn
DeRossi’s outlook sits in opposition to a backdrop of upheaval within the restaurant business, each broadly and considerably throughout the plant-based sector. In response to the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation, greater than 90,000 US eating places closed between 2020 and 2024 on account of pandemic disruption, adopted by rising labor prices, hire will increase, and inflationary pressures.
Vegan eating places have been particularly uncovered to these pressures. Final 12 months wasn’t a lot better for a few of the largest names within the house. In Seattle, Plum Bistro—a longtime anchor of the town’s vegan eating scene—closed after practically twenty years in operation. In close by Portland, Paradox Café, one of many metropolis’s earliest vegetarian eating places, shuttered after a 30-year run.
Los Angeles has misplaced fashionable locations, together with Nic’s on Beverly, Little Pine, Sugar Taco, and the critically acclaimed Kusaki. Chicago misplaced 4 spots: Kitchen 17, Native Meals, Chicago Uncooked, and one Chicago Diner location.
DeRossi’s New York has seen its share of losses, too. Candle Cafe, Champs Diner, and Cadence have shuttered. Trendy Love Brooklyn introduced its closure after eight years, with founder Isa Chandra Moskowitz pointing to the structural challenges going through full-service eating places and the economics of third-party supply platforms.
“It’s inconceivable to soak up the cuts that third-party apps take,” Moskowitz informed Eater final spring.
And on the fine-dining degree, the shift has additionally been seen. Los Angeles’ legendary Crossroads Kitchen shut its Calabasas location in 2024 (even with frequent Kardashian sightings). New York’s Eleven Madison Park, which gained worldwide consideration when it moved to a wholly plant-based tasting menu in 2021, confirmed final 12 months that it could reintroduce choose meat and fish dishes, citing the necessity to broaden demand and stabilize reservations.
The contraction is critical, particularly with the lack of so many iconic spots—together with a number of within the Overthrow Hospitality group—however plant-based eating remains to be a vacation spot. IBISWorld estimates that there have been greater than 32,000 vegetarian and vegan restaurant companies working within the US in 2025. And vegan choices at the moment are frequent on standard restaurant menus at fast-food giants like Burger King and Taco Bell, in addition to steakhouses and Michelin-starred locations.
Opening with no mounted roadmap
For DeRossi, although, opening new areas isn’t about filling the voids left by these closures, however reasonably, creating new areas that haven’t been carried out earlier than. “I don’t suppose we truly ever determine which new idea to open, it simply sorta occurs,” DeRossi says. For him and his Overthrow co-founder, Drew Brady, concepts flow into consistently. At any second, they’re juggling a dozen or extra ideas in dialog, however nothing advances with out individuals first.
“The toughest a part of any of that is discovering the fitting chef to work with for a brand new idea. After which discovering the fitting house,” he says. Solely then do concepts begin to take type.
Al-Andalus
“When the fitting chef comes alongside, somebody we actually need to work with, we’ll all brainstorm concepts collectively,” DeRossi says. If the group lands on one thing that excites them, they start trying to find a location. Spatial match issues as a lot as conceptual match. “There have been instances we had the fitting chef, the proper idea, then we discover a house that simply doesn’t swimsuit it for some cause and we modify it up final minute.”
For higher or worse, he says, “we go along with our intestine. We do what feels greatest.” Overthrow can be increasing into new cities in 2026. “We now have one very profitable idea in New York Metropolis that will probably be opening quickly in Denver first after which in different cities across the nation.”
Crowds reply rapidly to house, vitality, and tone. DeRossi and Brady intention to create environments they personally take pleasure in. “We simply construct the locations that we need to hang around at,” DeRossi says. “We design areas that we need to spend time in, we play music that we need to take heed to, we set the lights on the degree we need to be in.” He notes that hundreds of thousands of friends have gravitated towards these sensibilities as a result of they really feel so genuine.
For a founder whose profession started outdoors hospitality, that instinctual orientation has at all times been central. Earlier than eating places, DeRossi thought-about himself an artist.
“Creativity is the one commodity that I’ll by no means run out of,” he says. Artwork, and now hospitality, are technique of expression reasonably than ends in themselves.
At one level, DeRossi was overseeing roughly 15 venues in New York. “I used to be making a ton of cash, however I used to be completely depressing,” he says. Changing the entire enterprise to vegan eating places and embedding neighborhood and planet-oriented work, he says, modified how he felt about his life and work.
This philosophy extends into how Overthrow operates. DeRossi works with a set of core values that information decision-making throughout groups and conditions. “We now have at all times believed that main from the again of the road is the way in which to go,” he says. Workers are inspired to confer with these values in on a regular basis decisions reasonably than counting on shut supervision. “If they permit our core values to assist dictate the reply, it’ll at all times be the proper manner.”
Loung Rely
Collaboration, he says, should start with respect. “We now have a strict ‘no assholes’ rule relating to who we determine to work with. I’ve labored with some terrible individuals previously, and it retains me up at evening.” And he’s additionally put range on the helm. At the moment, all however one of many management roles at Overthrow Hospitality are occupied by a girl or an individual of coloration. “It was by no means a acutely aware option to employees this manner, however it’s now ingrained into our DNA,” he says.
For DeRossi, technical talent may be cultivated; alignment with objective can’t. “So long as this individual has the drive to cook dinner and is aware of how one can use a knife, we will make them an amazing chef.” But when somebody doesn’t care about animals or the planet, he says, the work turns into transactional and unsustainable.
Shifting tastes
The thought for Al-Andalus, which opened final summer time, started with DeRossi’s travels in Spain and a fascination with the tapas custom: small, cheap plates served rapidly. “I’ve at all times thought it could be enjoyable to create a real tapas expertise the place the meals parts are small, low cost, and so they come out quick,” he says.
Conversations with chef Amira Gharib broadened the scope. “She is Egyptian and informed me in regards to the Center Japanese affect in Spain through the Sixteenth century, which I used to be not conscious of in any respect on the time.” Analysis confirmed this thread, and a Sixteenth-century Andalusian idea emerged.
Al-Andalus
The gamble has paid off with opinions praising the vibes and the menu—not only for the inventive dishes (suppose harissa-spiced tortilla, stuffed cabbage, shakshuka, shawarma mushrooms, and baladi bread) however for his or her affordability in an unsure economic system. Most dishes clock in at below $10.
Lengthy Rely, which additionally sits in Manhattan’s Decrease East Facet, payments itself as an aged wine and focaccia bar that options wines at the least 10 years previous alongside slow-fermented small plates.
“Lengthy Rely needs to be one of many coolest bars I’ve ever been to,” DeRossi says, though he insists he’s “the least ‘cool’ individual” he is aware of.
Lengthy Rely
“The place else are you able to get a 30-year-old Cab Franc, and by the glass, in addition to fermented black truffle arancini? It’s form of insane what a bit little bit of persistence does to taste; it’s simply actually fucking cool,” he says.
“All the things now we have ever created at Overthrow Hospitality is a distinct segment topic,” DeRossi says. “Whether or not it’s a restaurant that solely serves mushrooms or a cocktail bar that serves solely stirred amaro cocktails with zero juice, we wish to restrict ourselves,” he says. “I feel it conjures up creativity to present ourselves set parameters to work inside.”
For extra plant-based tales like this, learn:
Jill Ettinger is the Director of Digital Technique for VegNews and co-founder of the sustainable luxurious platform, Ethos.
