Mili, the pop-up from an Estela chef and an Altro Paradiso GM, opens on Ludlow Street Nov. 4

One of the city's busier pop-ups is getting a permanent home. Mili opens on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 123 Ludlow St. on the Lower East Side, Resy reported. It's the first restaurant of their own for chef Jorge Luis Pabón, who is from Puerto Rico and was executive chef at Estela, and Alexis White, from North Carolina, who was general manager at Altro Paradiso. The couple named it after Pabón's mother, Milagros, who taught him to cook.

Since April 2025, Mili has run 18 pop-ups in New York, Naples, Mexico City and elsewhere, including a three-month residency at Runner Up in Park Slope, according to Resy.

What's on the menu

Pabón calls the cooking "New York Creative": French technique with seasonal ingredients, and he told Resy he will work closely with farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket. The menu runs to about 15 plates meant for sharing, Resy reported, including:

• a savory cheese course, shaved on a girolle, with caramelized onions, grilled grapes and a semolina sesame cracker, a pop-up favorite;
• a potato and sunchoke tart in puff pastry with Taleggio sauce;
• Hudson Valley duck, aged in the restaurant's own dry-ager;
• monkfish with onion sauce and sea lettuce;
• desserts including flan, a buckwheat-tea milk custard and pear cake with walnut ice cream.

White's drinks list is entirely domestic, with nine wines by the glass, about 75 bottles and a few classic cocktails, such as a Sake Negroni made with Brooklyn Kura sake and vermouth from Long Island's Channing Daughters.

If you go

• Address: 123 Ludlow St., Lower East Side, Manhattan
• Opens: Wednesday, Nov. 4
• Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 5 to 11 p.m., per the restaurant's website; closed Monday and Tuesday
• Reservations: released two weeks in advance at 9 a.m.; the room has 34 seats and a small bar
• Getting there: F to Delancey St or J/M/Z to Essex St

More new places: Giuk in Flatiron and Velvet Cowboy on the Upper West Side, or see what opened this week.