The Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces New Restaurant Partnership with Chefs Rita Sodi and Jody Williams

(New York, October 8, 2025)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today a new culinary partnership with award-winning chefs Rita Sodi and Jody Williams to reimagine the Museum’s restaurant program. The collaboration will include the new culinary amenities that are being developed as part of The Met’s renovation and activation of its entrance at 83rd Street and Fifth Avenue, and reconfiguration of the dining and retail spaces within.

Together with The Met, Sodi and Williams will craft a new approach to food and beverage that reflects a classic, timeless New York sensibility elevated by the creativity and inventiveness that are unique to The Met. In close collaboration with Museum staff—and Restaurant Associates, The Met’s culinary services operator—Sodi and Williams will shape a culinary vision that both reinvigorates existing offerings and develops new dining concepts, which will begin to emerge in 2027 at The Met’s Fifth Avenue location and in later phases, at the Trie Cafe at The Met Cloisters in northern Manhattan. Building on Restaurant Associates’ deep expertise in hospitality and its trusted role in managing the Museum’s restaurant venues, the partnership envisions a spectrum of dining experiences, from cafes serving light refreshments to restaurants offering full lunch and dinner service, all designed to serve The Met’s six million annual visitors.

"We are thrilled to have the extraordinary and visionary culinary power couple Rita and Jody partner with us as we work to bring bold and reinvigorated dining offerings to The Met," said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO. “They are two of New York City’s most imaginative and dynamic chefs with several distinguished restaurants, and we are thrilled to see their creative excellence meld with the inspiration of the Museum.”
Chefs Sodi and Williams said, “The Met provides creative and intellectual nourishment to countless people in so many ways. We are humbled to be part of The Met’s next chapter and delighted to add to the culinary experience at the Museum we love.”

Chefs Sodi and Williams, who The New York Times called “one of the great partnerships of the New York restaurant scene,” are behind some of New York’s most popular and celebrated dining institutions. In 2014, they opened Via Carota, an Italian osteria in the West Village, which earned them the James Beard Award for Best Chefs in New York City in 2019 and was recently named one of the best restaurants in North America by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Their portfolio also includes I Sodi, Buvette, Bar Pisellino, and The Commerce Inn.

About The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens—businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day—who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Today, The Met displays tens of thousands of objects covering 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since its founding, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

About Rita Sodi and Jody Williams
Rita Sodi and Jody Williams are self-taught, James Beard Award–winning chefs. Together Sodi and Williams created the widely admired New York restaurants Via Carota, I Sodi, Buvette, The Commerce Inn, and Bar Pisellino—all within steps of each other in the West Village. The chefs wrote the bestselling cookbook Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking, and launched Via Carota Craft Cocktails, award-winning ready-to-pour cocktails inspired by their vibrant bars. Their intuitive, seasonal cooking has garnered extensive critical acclaim, while their neighborhood shops—Officina 1397, a curated market of Italian kitchen provisions and local produce, and Officina del Bere, dealer in fine wines, cocktails, and spirits—continue to grow their following.

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October 8, 2025