Soda Club – East Village pasta that happens to be vegan

On the corner of Avenue A and Sixth Street in the East Village, Soda Club serves an entirely vegan, Italian-American menu that has made it one of the more unlikely fixtures of New York's MICHELIN Bib Gourmand list, a distinction it has held every year since it opened in the neighbourhood in 2021. The restaurant actually began a few blocks over, where Ravi DeRossi's Overthrow Hospitality opened Soda Club at 155 Avenue B between Ninth and 10th Streets in May 2021, before outgrowing the room and relocating in 2025 to the larger corner space at 95 Avenue A that had previously housed Amor y Amargo. Run by DeRossi with wine director Drew Brady, part of a group whose East Village portfolio also includes some of the city's more serious drinking rooms, Soda Club holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the guide's mark for cooking that is both excellent and reasonably priced, for pasta that treats plants as the main event rather than a substitution.

01The room and the setting

The current room is a proper corner site: a marble wall veined in gold, a long red cushioned bench and chairs upholstered in velvet, with green and yellow lighting accents and wooden shelving stacked with bottles above the bar window. Outside on Avenue A, a neon sign reading SODACLUB and a run of string lights mark out the terrace tables that spill onto the Sixth Street corner. Further inside, past a wooden archway, a mural of a flower-crowned, moon-faced woman watches over a patterned tiled floor and candlelit tables — a room built, as the move from the smaller Avenue B site in 2025 suggests, to hold a regular crowd rather than just a date-night overflow.

02The chef

Amira Gharib has been Soda Club's opening chef from the start, a New Jersey native who spent her formative years in Cairo and brings that Egyptian background to bear on an Italian menu. From the beginning she has shaped the restaurant's identity around fresh, handmade pasta and familiar dishes approached with a little more imagination, with pastas, breads and sauces made in house behind cooking that is meant to read as comforting rather than clever. She now oversees the kitchen across both the East Village original and the newer Denver outpost inside The Ramble Hotel, carrying the same culinary voice — Sicilian in its bones, North African and Mediterranean in its seasoning — between the two rooms.

Insider tip

Reservations via Resy/SevenRooms open 21 days ahead; walk-ins welcome. Kitchen closes 10:30pm (10pm Sundays).

03The cooking

Every plate at Soda Club is vegan, and the kitchen's confidence shows in how little that fact is advertised on the plate itself. In New York, longtime pasta classics sit alongside rotating specials and a Roman-style pinsa program built on long-fermented dough, with flavours that move freely beyond the expected Italian register — nori butter on tagliatelle, miso in a bagna cauda, pistachio worked into a cacio e pepe. The menu changes with the seasons, but the throughline is pasta, bread and sauce made daily in house, with technique doing the quiet work behind food meant to feel unfussy rather than austere.

04What to order

Start with the focaccia in miso bagna cauda or the Castelvetrano olives with plant-based 'nduja, feta and orange, both $8 as read on the New York menu in October 2026.

05Wine and drinks

Soda Club is built on a European neighbourhood wine-bar model, and wine director Drew Brady's list runs past 200 bottles, weighted toward small independent producers rather than recognisable labels. The cocktail list keeps the same slightly contrarian streak: a Dear Dahlia gimlet made with London dry gin, gentian amaro, lime and strawberry thyme; an Avenue Arthur built on brandy, amaro and chocolate bitters; and a non-alcoholic Gelsomina mixing an alcohol-free aperitif and amaro with passionfruit and lavender, for guests pacing themselves through a long dinner.

06When to go and booking

As read on the restaurant's site in October 2026, Soda Club in New York opens Monday to Thursday from 5pm to midnight, Friday and Saturday from 5pm to 1am, and Sunday from 5pm to 10.30pm, with the kitchen closing half an hour before the room does (10pm on Sundays). Reservations run through Resy and SevenRooms and open 21 days ahead, though walk-ins are always welcome and accommodated where possible; outdoor seating on the Avenue A corner is a good option in warmer months. The full menu is kosher certified and parve, a detail worth knowing if you're bringing guests who keep kosher — one more way this is a neighbourhood restaurant first and a vegan destination second.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.