The family behind Rome’s legendary restaurant world Roscioli had been asked to come open in New York many times. It took a pandemic to bring them here, plus their trust in one woman: Ariel Arce.
Arce is a born and raised New Yorker whose story reflects the city’s changing food scene. She’s been the proprietor of several hot spots, including Air’s Champagne Bar, Tokyo Record Bar and Niche Niche, and she now is a partner in the New York location of Roscioli, known for its wine pairings as well as its classic Roman cuisine. Launching this June is Heroes, on West Broadway, and she has another project at the Conrad hotel in the works.
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Her success story is all about the pivot.
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Arce grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, in a household with lots of entertaining. Her father was both an amazing cook and a professional food photographer, so she was often around food stylists as a kid. Yet from the age of eight, she was set on being an actress. After attending New York’s prestigious LaGuardia High School, her time in the University of Michigan’s theater program felt “reductive,” she says. What did click, though, was the production aspect of the film and theater world, and she thought she’d pursue that upon graduation.
“That was right when the economy crashed,” she says. “It was 2009, nobody had jobs, and it was a very difficult industry to be jumping into. So I just got a job bartending and I’ve never looked back.”
Arce fell in love with the behind-the-scenes elements of restaurants — similarly to how she felt about theater production.
“I’m not a chef, but I saw how all of these pieces would fall together,” she says. “I just liked the culture. I liked the flexibility, I liked the creativity. The element of production just felt really natural.”
She began her career in Chicago, which she hoped would be more open to a newcomer like herself than the scene in New York was at that time.
“It was either fine dining or casual. In a way, the world of what we see in food now [in New York] is kind of just emerging,” Arce says. “And by that I mean the independent restaurant owner/operator that wasn’t somebody who owned a building and had been operating for 20 years.”
She started working in cocktails in Chicago, ultimately discovering a penchant for Champagne. She worked for Pops for Champagne, a prestigious wine bar in Chicago, before returning to New York two years later and partnering on a fried chicken and Champagne bar in downtown Manhattan called Birds and Bubbles. The experience was what she calls her introduction to New York City.
In the years that followed, Arce opened Air Champagne Bar and Tokyo Record Bar, a Japanese style cocktail and vinyl listening bar. This past year, she was the American partner that the famed Roscioli team turned to when they were looking to open a New York branch of their Roman restaurant.
“It’s a really special thing to be a part of a legacy. In Rome, there’s four outlets at the moment, and everybody has a different relationship to them. Most of our guests that come through the door have been to them before. Not having to really explain what you are, and just having the freedom to do, and challenge yourself of how you can do, is really unique,” Arce says. “It’s really cool to be a part of a team. This is the first thing I’ve ever done where it’s not just mine. So for all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of having partners, it’s a really incredible learning experience to come together and build something.”
Arce’s timeline in the business has not been without setbacks, from the financial crisis at the time of her graduation to, of course, the pandemic. She notes that when she started in the restaurant business it was heavily male dominated, especially when it came to who owned the businesses.
“COVID-19 did change a lot. At one point we were all worshiping at the church of the men of New York City in the food business, respectfully, like the Danny Meyers, the Jean Georges, the Daniel Bouluds. They dominated the scene. But what is so incredible about COVID-19 was there were no rules anymore,” she says. “People were doing pop-ups, people were collaborating. So many people lost their jobs. So many people were just kind of saying, ‘Screw it. I’m going to play.’ And now the landscape of what’s interesting in New York City to me is so fascinating, and there’s so many emerging women in this industry.”