The bad news: Vibrant tasting menu restaurant HAGS is closing in the East Village. The good news: Co-owners chef Telly Justice and sommelier Camille Lindsley are in the middle of relocating their queer restaurant to Noho next year.
The original East Village
location, at 163 First Avenue near East 10th Street, is having its final day on Sunday, October 18, with a last pay-what-you-can brunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. And then, HAGS 2.0 will open in Noho at 334 Bowery and East Third Street in January or February 2027.
Justice tells Eater that the team signed the Bowery lease in June and began working on the new space at the beginning of September. They told their First Avenue landlord about leaving the address, using their good guy clause (which allows them to get out of a commercial real estate lease with fair notice). It turns out that “a very energized, enthusiastic tenant,” per Justice, wanted to take over the address as soon as possible, which meant they had to leave in 30 days. HAGS tried to extend their lease, but they couldn’t make it work.
“We can’t fault them for that; they’re doing their job, we’re doing ours,” Justice says. The staff is getting what she describes as a “lengthy severance,” adding that “everybody’s going to get a nice long paid vacation, myself included, and I think we all need and deserve that right now.”
(HAGS’s name works two-fold: it stands for “Have a Good Summer” and references the word that Merriam-Webster describes as an “evil-looking old woman.”)
The Noho restaurant is larger than the 20-seat East Village location, with about 60 to 70 seats. It’ll serve an a la carte menu, as opposed to those tasting menus. There’s also a full liquor license so they can serve cocktails. And don’t worry: the pay-what-you-can Sunday brunch is staying.
HAGS’s pivot to a la carte is centered on snacky dishes. “I’m really excited about going even smaller and having these tiny, cute, dainty little bites that you can order by the piece and have little snack platters and cocktails and party and have a good time,” she says.
Justice is particularly hyped about the tuna melt. “It’s our HAGSification of a New York classic,” she says, taking cues from White Castle sliders. It’s a two-bite sandwich, made with rice brioche bread; confited tuna; a mess of crunchy vegetables like celery, fennel, Basque peppers; and American cheese made with coconut milk. She likes the idea of either ordering a platter for friends or eating a whole bunch by yourself.
Back in 2022, when Justice and Lindsley opened HAGS in the former original Momofuku Noodle Bar space, they knew it would be too small. “We felt like ostensibly total nobodies in the scene, and we didn’t expect anybody would really care about our project,” Justice says. “A small thing made sense to us, and we wanted to do a small thing. That was naive in a way.” The following year, Justice won the James Beard Foundation’s Young Chef award .
When looking for HAGS’s second home, Justice and Lindsley’s goal was to move onto the Bowery, and the Noho address fit the bill. Telly talks about the recent “revitalization” of the major street, pointing to places like the newly opened wine bar Crybaby. “It’s really cool to join this community of projects that are reshaping the Bowery to be this cool thoroughfare again,” she says. “It’s a dream come true for us.”
The neighborhood’s deep-rooted history is appealing, too. “The cultural aspects and the ebbs and flows of New York City, the cultural aspects of a block really matter to us and imprint on the final document of the space,” Justice says. “It dictates a lot about what the future of the business is and the identity of the business and how we want to integrate into the community surrounding it.” She describes the new HAGS as “leaning into this Bowery, jazz, punk, rock and roll, Great Jones art community cinematic universe, so to speak.”
Design-wise, “the words that we’ve been using a lot with our current designer are ‘acid culture’ and ‘psychedelic culture,’ leaning into this ’70s and ’80s Bowery vibe,” Justice says. The idea is to go harder than the softer look of the original HAGS.
Justice talks about leaving the East Village like the team is graduating college. “It feels a lot like leaving your college dorm room,” she says. “ I’ll always have such beautiful memories of it, but I’m spending these last couple of days in the space looking around and already experiencing the nostalgia of it and grieving it.”
