Deal at Havana Central

It’s right downstairs, for all your organic beauty needs.

Warby Parker’s 200th real-world store is located nearby at 73 5th Avenue.

Partea, an arcade with bubble tea and fried chicken sandwiches, opened in Flushing, Queens back in September 2020. Now, the team has expanded across the water to Manhattan, with a new outpost at 220 E. 14th Street, near Third Avenue, in Union Square. Like in Queens, certain meal combos come with “surprise” plushie toys, and there’s a snack menu to pick from that includes Taiwanese sausages, cuttlefish balls, and spicy wings. The Union Square location is currently open, and a grand opening party is planned for August 18. Meanwhile, the team is already plotting a west coast expansion, with Parteas planned for West Covina and Little Tokyo, in Los Angeles. Partea Union Square will stay open most nights until 11 p.m.

Be sure to check out Num Pang, the tiny new Cambodian sandwich shop on 12th St. just around the corner from University Place. The sandwiches, prices around $7.50 are fresh, spicy, and unusual, very much like Vietnamese banh mi. Crowds have overwhelmed the place in its early days, and it’s been sold out a few times. Still, very much worth a visit, even if the prices are more than double what you would pay for something similar down in Chinatown.

File under news of the weird.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been working hard to get landmark status for a wide swath of the blocks below Union Square, contending, correctly, that the locations were hotbeds of artistic innovation in post-war NYC. Abstract expression was born here, after all. To see their full proposal the Landmarks Commission, click here.