Dagon – the Mediterranean, broadcast from Broadway

Dagon takes its formal name from a Phoenician and Philistine god of agriculture and earth, but the restaurant's real patron is a ship. The name nods to the Voice of Peace, the offshore radio station that for two decades broadcast across the Middle East from a former Dutch cargo vessel called the MV Peace, whose nightly sign-off promised listeners a dispatch from somewhere in the Mediterranean. Chef Driven Hospitality opened the restaurant on a sunlit corner of Broadway at 91st Street in 2021, and it was quickly praised as Best New Restaurant by the New York Post, Bloomberg and Time Out New York, going on to be recognised by the MICHELIN Guide. Today it is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide. Executive Chef and Partner Ari Bokovza, who has since opened Acadia in Midtown, runs a kitchen that travels from southern Italy to North Africa, a style shaped by his Tunisian grandmother and his years training under some of New York's most exacting chefs. The result is a room where chicken liver mousse, Yemeni pull-apart bread and charcoal-grilled branzino sit on the same table without contradiction.

01The room and the setting

Dagon occupies a prominent, large-windowed corner of Broadway at 91st Street, a few blocks from Central Park on the Upper West Side. Inside, light wood tables and chairs, vintage wallpaper and banquettes finished in ivory and chocolate-coloured cushions are meant to evoke la dolce vita and the same 1970s warmth the Voice of Peace broadcast for decades. The dining room is spacious and plant-filled, with a tiled floor and an open kitchen in view, and large glass light fixtures hang over an off-center bar and long counter that regulars treat as the best seat in the house.

A wraparound bar anchors the room, with leafy vines trailing from the ceiling and leanable bar stools built for lingering. The whole space seats around 135 across a main dining room and a smaller upstairs section, giving Dagon the scale for both a quiet weekday lunch and a loud Friday night.

02The chef

Ari Bokovza grew up in Israel, where his Tunisian grandmother introduced him to the spices that still define his cooking. He trained throughout Europe, culminating at the Michelin-starred El Racó d'en Freixa in Barcelona, before moving to New York to work under Michael Romano at Union Square Cafe, at Picholine, under Dan Silverman at The Standard Grill, and for three years as chef de cuisine at Gabriel Kreuther's The Modern, during which the restaurant was awarded three stars by The New York Times. He later served as Executive Chef at The Harrison, Claudette and BoBo, and as Culinary Director for the Casa Nela Group, before joining Chef Driven Hospitality to open Dagon as Executive Chef and Partner in 2021.

Insider tip

Open for lunch, dinner, weekend brunch and dessert; nearest subway is 96th Street on the 1, 2, 3 lines.

Dagon is run under Chef Driven Hospitality, the group founded by restaurateur Simon Oren with partners David Sasson and Gil Ohana — the trio behind Dagon's wider family of Mediterranean and French bistro concepts across the city. Bokovza's success at Dagon led him, with the same partners, to open the larger Levantine restaurant Acadia opposite Carnegie Hall, where general manager Alon Moskovitch — who built his career at Payard Patisserie & Bistro and L'Express before opening Dagon — now also oversees operations.

03The cooking

The kitchen treats mezze as the soul of the menu rather than a prelude to it: chicken liver mousse with mustard seed, date syrup and baharat; marinated beets with horseradish yogurt and crispy beef tongue; charred eggplant confit with buttermilk vinaigrette and tomato jam; and shishbarak, Lebanese mushroom dumplings in warm yogurt with pine nuts and a spicy herb sauce. Breads are made in-house daily — a Yemeni kubaneh pulled apart at the table with feta and labneh, and a za'atar-dusted Jerusalem bagel.

Beyond the mezze table, Bokovza's larger plates include a Levantine riff on Caesar salad with tahini-anchovy dressing and anchovy tempura, harissa BBQ chicken with sumac potato purée, and a whole branzino cooked over charcoal and finished with preserved lemon butter and celery root — the kind of dish that moves the menu firmly from snack culture into dinner.

04What to order

Dinner here tends to open with the bread basket — kubaneh and a Jerusalem bagel are hard to skip — before moving into a shared spread of mezze. Time Out singled out the chicken liver mousse, flash-fried cauliflower, whole charcoal-grilled branzino, harissa BBQ chicken and crispy roasted lamb as the dishes to order at dinner, while brunch leans on a Jerusalem bagel with smoked salmon, shakshuka and pancakes with seasonal compote. Arayes — ground lamb and dry-aged beef stuffed into pita and crisped on the plancha, served with labneh and grated tomato — is a fixture of the three-course dinner menu offered Sunday through Friday, alongside hummus, chilled corn soup and salmon gravlax.

For private events, Dagon's own team points to a show-stopping Crispy Roasted Lamb finished with dates and walnuts as the dish built for a table celebrating something.

05Wine and drinks

Beverage Director Aviram Turgeman, who oversees drinks across the Chef Driven group, built a cocktail list around Mediterranean fruit, herbs and spices, alongside a wine list rated with a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence that includes a selection of kosher wines. Time Out has highlighted the Sabra Margarita, poured with a za'atar-salted rim, and the Mediterranean G&T, mixed with cucumber, citrus and rosemary tonic, as signatures of the frequently updated drinks menu.

06When to go and booking

Dagon serves lunch, dinner, weekend brunch and a dedicated dessert menu, and keeps hours from Monday to Friday, 5pm to 10pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 10:30am to 3pm and again from 5pm to 10pm, according to Time Out. The nearest subway stop is 96th Street on the 1, 2 and 3 lines, a short walk north along Broadway.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.