Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley will open its first New York location on Saturday, October 3, at 7 Times Square, marking the brand’s entry into the country’s biggest media market and its largest restaurant to date at 10,000 square feet across two floors. Reservations are open now.

The opening is the latest step in a rapid, self-funded expansion for the Southern comfort food and kocktail concept. Kevin Kelley, an attorney and entrepreneur, founded and solely owns Kitchen + Kocktails without outside investors or a franchise model.

The brand debuted with a single Dallas restaurant in August 2020 and has since expanded to Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Philadelphia and Miami. A Boston location is set to follow the New York opening, with New Orleans planned for later in 2026.

“Opening Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley in New York is an incredible milestone for us,” Kelley said in a press release. “Times Square gives us the opportunity to introduce our brand on one of the world’s biggest stages, but we’re building this restaurant for New York. Whether you’re coming from Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan or visiting from across the country or around the world, we want you to walk through our doors and feel like this is your restaurant. That’s what ‘Welcome Home’ means to us.”

The menu centers on the Southern dishes that built the brand’s following, including shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles finished with a white wine cream sauce, cornmeal-crusted Southern fried catfish, jumbo lump crab cakes and lobster and waffles served fried or grilled.

The Trinity Egg Rolls, stuffed with mac and cheese, candied yams and turkey-and-greens, round out the menu’s signature items. The kocktail list includes the 24K Gold Fashioned, the blackberry margarita and the brand’s national best-seller, the Peach D’USSÉ Frosé, along with True Flame, which is served with a live tableside flame presentation.

The Times Square space features wave-slatted wooden ceilings, cultural murals and floral installations across multiple dining areas, an expansive bar and a private dining room, designed to accommodate both tourists and theatergoers as well as New York-area regulars.

Kelley has traced the concept’s hospitality focus back to his childhood. Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, he began cooking at age seven alongside his grandmother, who taught him that feeding people was a way of showing them they mattered. He has said a period spent living in Paris, where he found himself missing the Southern cooking and sense of home from his upbringing, helped inspire the restaurant’s concept.

Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley in New York will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until midnight on Friday and Saturday.