A massive Southern comfort food restaurant is opening in Times Square

Times Square is about to get a little more Southern—and a lot more maximalist.

Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley will open its first New York City restaurant on Saturday, October 3, bringing fried chicken, shrimp and grits and flaming drinks to a two-story space at 7 Times Square.

At 10,000 square feet, the new outpost will be the growing restaurant group’s largest location yet, with room for 300 guests across multiple dining areas, an expansive bar and a private dining room. Expect wave-like wooden ceilings, colorful murals and dense floral installations, including the brand’s signature rose wall. In other words, your phone may eat first.

The menu draws on Southern comfort-food traditions, with signatures including cornmeal-crusted Mississippi catfish, lobster and waffles, crab cakes with Cajun spices and remoulade and shrimp and grits. The Trinity Egg Rolls pack mac and cheese, candied yams, greens and turkey into a deep-fried wrapper, served with a sweet-and-spicy sauce.

Then there are the “kocktails,” which are not known for subtlety: the national bestseller is a frozen Peach D’USSÉ Frosé, while the 24K Gold Fashioned puts a flashy spin on the classic drink. The True Flame even comes with an actual live-flame presentation. (Drinks range from $13 to $53, while large-format group cocktails can cost as much as $249.)

The restaurant comes from Kevin Kelley, a litigation attorney and entrepreneur who opened the first Kitchen + Kocktails in Dallas in August 2020. Since then, the independently owned company has expanded to Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Philadelphia and Miami, with Boston also on the way.

Kelley, who was born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, began cooking alongside his grandmother when he was seven. That experience inspired the company’s “Welcome Home” hospitality style.

“Times Square gives us the opportunity to introduce our brand on one of the world’s biggest stages, but we’re building this restaurant for New York,” Kelley said. “We want you to walk through our doors and feel like this is your restaurant.”

Kitchen + Kocktails will serve lunch and dinner Monday through Friday and brunch on weekends. It will remain open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays—good news for anyone craving lobster and waffles after a Broadway show.