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Saga Is Starting Fresh

DATE POSTED:August 19, 2025
Photo: Courtesy of Saga

When Charlie Mitchell worked at Clover Hill, the 20-seat Brooklyn Heights tasting room where he earned his first Michelin star and was named the best chef in New York by the James Beard Foundation, his days began and ended in the kitchen. When he arrived at Saga, the skyscraper-topping gastronomy penthouse in Fidi, his calendar began to fill up: “Branding meetings, logo meetings, design meetings, plate meetings, new vision meetings,” he says. “It’s a large company.”

After taking over in 2024, Mitchell wanted to maintain and honor the previous order installed by Jamal James Kent, the chef who opened Saga and ran it until his unexpected death. Mitchell made small adjustments at first and waited eight months before adding his first dish to the $300, nine-course tasting menu: grilled madai with farro, collard greens, and ham-hock consommé.

It was intended in some ways to pay tribute to the food Mitchell ate growing up in Detroit. “That grandma’s-house feeling is very special,” he says. “You can go there anytime, any day, and get a plate.” His new fall menu will take Thanksgiving as its jumping-off point with courses like a beet tart with cranberry sauce, yellow grits with butter and hot sauce, and sliced brioche topped with sorrel leaves and caviar. Mitchell is also removing the larger presentations intended to be shared by diners that Kent had been known for. “That’s not really my style,” he says. “I’m still at that phase of my career where I’m trying to control every bite you have.”

The message is clear: This is Charlie Mitchell’s Saga now, and the dining room is being remodeled to coincide with the new direction. Pale-salmon carpeting is gone, replaced by a subtler shade of brown, and new serviceware from Hering Berlin and Christofle will sit on freshly installed black-marble tabletops. When it reopens on September 1, Saga will live at the top of the city’s fine-dining hierarchy alongside stalwarts such as Per Se and Eleven Madison Park; Mitchell was still working as a chef de partie at the latter just five years ago. Nobody has been more surprised by his rapid ascent than Mitchell himself. “Obviously, I set out to get three Michelin stars — I want to be the first Black chef to get three stars,” he says. “But at that time, it didn’t really seem obtainable.”

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