What’s one thing New York City’s most stylish tables all have in common? Daniel Emilio Soares and his culinary design studio, Alimentari Flâneur. From an East Harlem headquarters, the 31-year old choreographs menus and mise-en-scène for clients who want their parties to taste and look like a dream. “We have to remember we’re in the business of hospitality,” he says. “Our job is to make sure guests are having a great time.” That can mean Diet Coke in glass bottles beside caviar canapés or tables piled high with a tiramisu tower—reminders that pleasure outranks formality for clients like Proenza Schouler, goop, Salvatore Ferragamo, Hôtel La Fantaisie, and the Waldorf Astoria.
Soares’s connection to food began long before he did. His great-grandfather arrived in Greenwich Village with little more than a pushcart stocked with fruits, vegetables, and ice—an immigrant’s starter kit that quietly grew into one of New York’s most storied gourmet lineages. Balducci’s became the first full-scale European-style specialty market in the city. His grandmother Grace Balducci and grandfather Joe Doria later split from the original business to open Grace’s Marketplace on the Upper East Side, where the aisles served as a family living room and the city’s well-heeled regulars flocked for gourmet staples. “It was an empire,” Soares says. “My whole family worked there.”
One of Daniel Emilio Soares’s culinary designs, which are popular with clients including Proenza Schouler, goop, Salvatore Ferragamo, Hôtel La Fantaisie, and the Waldorf Astoria. Olivia Lopez
Still, he resisted the familial gravitational pull. There was NYU, a brief flirtation with real estate, and an earnest stint in fashion, including two and a half years interning at Barneys. But it wasn’t until he moved to Paris, with no job and barely any French, that he understood how deeply markets had shaped him. In the Marais, he began shopping at Marché des Enfants Rouges every day, befriending vendors and finding comfort in ritual. “That’s where my love of markets came from,” he says. “The simplicity, the beauty, the ritual of it.”’
He eventually returned to New York and tried to work at Grace’s: he imagined sleeker displays, a more European sensibility, contemporary branding. But the politics of legacy hit hard. He loved the family, but the family business was a different story. “Legacy comes with its own politics,” he says. Some things, he realized, should be left the way they are. He knew he needed to build something of his own.
The turning point came in the summer of 2019, when he staged a petite pop-up—just ninety square feet, but imbued with the spirit of the uptown markets he grew up in. He called it Grace Balducci Doria, a pointed nod to the lineage behind him. On day two, fashion Pied Piper Leandra Medine Cohen walked in, snapped a photo, and posted it. “I knew she was going to love it,” he says. “I knew she was going to post it.” Within hours, her followers began streaming in, turning the tiny stand into an Upper East Side curiosity, proof that food as design and food as art, could still make people stop in their tracks.
Daniel Emilio Soares’s future plans for Alimentari Flâneur include a flagship space in downtown Manhattan, expanded operations in Harlem, and collaborations with heritage brands. Olivia Lopez
After the pop-up closed, Soares kept going: sidewalk tables, curbside market stands, whatever would keep the momentum alive. He opened a Mulberry Street space in September 2020 with more instinct than capital. “I had $5,000 and a credit card,” he says. “But the space was perfect.” When foot traffic slowed after COVID restrictions eased, and people returned to restaurants rather than cooking at home, he struggled. But then came a holiday popup at Essex Market. Six frantic weeks of produce sold on heart, hustle, and a credit line. “I was losing so much money,” he says, “and then suddenly we just hit it.”
That was also when people started asking him to style their tables, their events, and then their entire evenings. “People don’t like calling it catering,” he says. “They call it art. They call it culinary design.” He approaches it the way a cinematographer approaches light. Fruit appears in voluptuous clusters; vegetables arranged like small sculptures; citrus stacked into miniature altars. But it’s never about perfection. “If you don’t pick up the fig and eat it,” he says, “then it didn’t do its job.”
This philosophy—beauty in abundance, seduction without preciousness—turned Alimentari Flâneur into more than a styling studio. It became a hospitality vision. Its why clients trust him with weddings, fashion dinners, and homes. And it’s why he’s attracted collaborators like cookbook author and chef Jodi Moreno, now his culinary partner. Together, they’re building a menu Soares describes as Portuguese-Italian American—not a fusion but a New York language. “Chicken Milanese isn’t Italian or Portuguese,” he says. “But it’s New York. Everybody understands it.”
Now, he’s looking ahead: a flagship space downtown, expanded operations in Harlem, and collaborations with heritage brands. A former client, Jonathan Swygert, became his investor and beverage director, helping Soares think past the table. “Authenticity is the hardest thing to maintain,” he says. It’s why he’s precise, even protective, about expansion. He’s watched too many New York institutions lose themselves by growing too fast.
In the end, Alimentari Flâneur isn’t a departure from his lineage—it’s his evolution. A love letter written through produce crates, caviar tins, tiramisu towers, and glass-bottle Diet Cokes. A continuation of the Balducci–Grace–Doria story, reframed through a younger generation’s eye. And always, a reminder that good taste should still, above all, taste good.
A version of this story appears in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of Town & Country.SUBSCRIBE NOW
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