NYC Meatpacking District Icon, Pastis, Is Coming to Wynwood

Pastis, New York City's iconic version of a classic Parisian bistro, is bound for Miami.

Restaurateurs Keith McNally and Stephen Starr will open Pastis Miami at 380 NW 26th Street in Wynwood in 2022.The property is owned by Miami developer David Edelstein.

The 8,000-square-foot restaurant will echo its Manhattan sibling's look with mirrors, subway tile, and warm wood tones. McNally, who founded the original Pastis in New York, will design the restaurant along with Ian McPheely of Paisley Design.

Pastis was one of the first chic restaurants in Lower Manhattan's Meatpacking District when McNally opened it in 1999. Before then, the neighborhood was filled with meat wholesalers and underground clubs, and its cobblestone streets sometimes ran with blood in the early morning hours.

McNally, the man behind fashionable New York establishments including the Odeon, Lucky Strike, Balthazar, and Minetta Tavern, took a chance with Pastis at a time when visitors to the Meatpacking District were more likely in search of a "date" for the night than a bowl of steamed mussels.

The risk turned into reward when the bistro became a Lower Manhattan magnet for after-work oysters and wee-hours nightcaps of its namesake, a French apéritif that turns a pearlescent green when mixed with water, much like its cousin, absinthe. The restaurant was featured in an episode of Sex and the City. James Gandolfini, of Sopranos fame, lived a block away and was a regular fixture.

The original Pastis closed in 2014, a victim of its own success. A Restoration Hardware now stands in its place. In 2019, McNally and Philadelphia-based restaurateur Stephen Starr revived the concept, opening a new Pastis bistro on Gansevoort Street, about a block south of the original.