Why Missy Robbins Decided to Open in the Domino Development in Williamsburg

Lilia chef Missy Robbins is moving full speed ahead on her upcoming Williamsburg restaurant, set in the newly revitalized Domino Park and chosen for its neighborhood defining potential.

Robbins sat down for an hour-long conversation on The Ringer’s J.J. Redick podcast, which touched on various topics such as why she opened Lilia in Williamsburg, how she’s mellowed out throughout her career, and her upcoming restaurant. She briefly discusses why she decided to open in the huge new Domino Park:

It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, this is a cool space.’ It was like, ‘Oh, we can be a part of the redefinition of a neighborhood.’ And that’s what the most appealing part of it was to us. The space is nice, but it’s in a new building. It certainly doesn’t have what Lilia has inherently, and it’ll be a very pretty restaurant, but really the driving force behind us making that decision was meeting with the visionary behind this and understanding his vision and wanting to be a part of that.

Robbins hasn’t revealed any other details about the 4,000-square-foot restaurant, which is currently under construction, though she’s celebrated for her pasta-making skills, which she refined in Italy and at A Voce before opening her hit restaurant Lilia. Two years since that debut, the restaurant is still an industry and celebrity darling, and it’s still one of the toughest tables to nab in town. Eater critic Ryan Sutton gave it two stars, while Times critic Pete Wells gave it three.

Her new restaurant is a part of the newly constructed Domino Park complex, which is a revitalization of the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg. It spreads across 4,000 square feet of the 11-acre compound in a doughnut-shaped building. The original timeline was sometime in 2018.