Estela Team Opening Up A Location Inside The New Met Museum Wing

Estela, the small plates Mediterranean restaurant in NoLita that both captured the attention of critics and nabbed the number 46 spot on The Daily Meal's 101 Best Restaurants in America list, is opening a new location on the Upper East Side.

Ignacio Mattos and Thomas Carter are opening a sequel to their buzzy restaurant, which will probably be dubbed Estela Breuer, inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the yet-to-be-opened Met Breuer. The new location of Estela is set to join the twentieth and twenty-first century artwork that will be featured at the Breuer as early as next summer.

"It seems very attractive to bring that downtown energy uptown," Thomas P. Campbell, the director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told The New York Times. "The Met is all too often seen as this sedate, august institution."  

Campbell described the style of dining at the upcoming new Estela as "experiential" and inviting of both snacking and feasting. "It can be formal, but it can be very informal," he said, cryptically. "It's very much what you as the diner make of it."

One thing the restaurant won't be is an old-fashioned, white-table-clothed stiff experience. Estela Breuer will likely be a more chic and upscale version of a museum café with a lengthy wine list of 500 bottles (that's 300 more than the original location).