Yalla Motek, the fast-casual Mediterranean street food concept from the team behind Miami's Motek, is taking a corner storefront at 366 Madison, minutes from Grand Central. It is the second Manhattan address made public for the brand after its NoMad debut this December, and the latest step in Happy Corner Hospitality's plan to grow to 20 New York restaurants over the next three years.
Sioni Group announced the deal, welcoming Yalla Motek to what it called one of Midtown's most iconic locations. Its rendering shows the storefront wrapping the corner in glass, the Yalla Motek name spelled out above the windows, and a dining room organized around arches with rattan chairs set along the sidewalk. The address is one of the five additional Yalla Motek sites Happy Corner Hospitality has in development across Manhattan, alongside 57th Street and 6th Avenue, Downtown Manhattan, the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side.
Before any of them open, the New York run begins in NoMad. Yalla Motek will open its first city location at 1147 Broadway this December in a 2,500-square-foot space leased from David and Jack Israel. That storefront will be the second Yalla Motek in the country after the original at the Treats Food Hall in Aventura Mall, which opened in 2022. Charlie Levy, founder of Happy Corner Hospitality, set out the scale of what comes next when the NoMad lease was signed. "This is just the beginning, we're planning five locations in New York with a vision of growing to 20 locations over the next three years and sharing our passion for Mediterranean street food with even more communities," he said.
Motek, the group's full-service sister brand, is already on the ground in New York. The restaurant recently opened on 57th Street, signed a lease last November for 184 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, and will open in Williamsburg in 2026. A third concept from the group is headed north as well. Sesame Kitchen, the all-day restaurant from SoLé Mia in North Miami, will make its New York debut in Battery Park.
All of it traces back to Downtown Miami, where Motek was founded in 2020. The brand has since grown to nine Florida locations, the newest of which, Motek By The Sea, opened at W Fort Lauderdale on November 5 as the brand's first oceanfront restaurant and its first in Broward County. Every concept in the group, including Yalla Motek and Sesame Kitchen, is 100% Seed Oil Free Certified, and Motek's menu is kosher-style, a combination that has carried the brand from Miami into Manhattan in under six years. "We always knew New York was the right city to truly introduce the brand," Levy said.