Another Innovative Sandwich Hit Is Taking Over Harry & Ida’s East Village Space

Inventive sandwich shop Harry & Ida’s may be closed, but turns out, the spirit of creatively prepared sandwiches will remain in the Avenue A space: Acclaimed East Village sandwich shop Foxface announced on its Instagram Wednesday that it’s taking it over for Foxface Provisions, as EV Grieve first spotted.

Ori Kushnir and Sivan Lahat run their creative sandwich shop out of a counter next to Theatre 80 St. Marks and received a star in the Times this year for their rotating menu that doesn’t stick to one cuisine. With more space at 189 Avenue A, they’ll be able to experiment more with ingredients — “smoke, ferment, dry, cure and otherwise transform ingredients in ways that do not fit in our tiny kitchen,” the post says.

The Foxface team expects the new location, which will be a “smokehouse, tasting room, and preservation commissary,” to open in spring 2020. Eater has reached out; see the full post below.

Foxface opened in 2019, and despite its tiny size, it became known for sandwiches like the smoking fox, which features smoked pork rib, coleslaw, and pickles. Other rotating options have included the egg roll (eggs, apple, pumpkin seed, Indian spices) and the berberian 2.0 (slow-roasted goat, berbere spice, tahini) — all of them innovative and laboriously prepared. Eater critic Robert Sietsema called the smoking fox “a triumph,” while Pete Wells at the Times lauded several of the concoctions.

Harry & Ida’s closed at the end of November, ending a celebrated tenure of smoked eel and pastrami sandwiches in the East Village. Siblings Julie and Will Horowitz decided to focus more on their other restaurant, Ducks Eatery.