Jean-Georges Vongerichten struck a deal with the Matsushita brothers (Japanese restaurateurs who own places in Japan and Hawaii) to open a branch of their popular Matsugen in the old 66 space in June. • Cyril Renaud, chef/owner of Fleur de Sel, will be opening a brasserie, Bar Breton (254 Fifth Ave.), next month. Renaud will double up as exec chef at both places. • Keeping up with trends, Geoffrey Zakarian is retooling The Dining Room at Country. This month it ditches its multicourse menu to be reborn as a steakhouse, which at press time is tentatively named Country Steak. • Chris Cannon and Michael White pulled the plug on L'Impero in June. It reemerged in July as Convivio, with a warmed up interior and a menu favoring Southern Italy. • This month Joseph Bastianich and Mario Batali open Terry Lodge, a pizzeria/trattoria in Port Chester, NY (18 Mill St.). Andy Nusser and Nancy Selzer, who are also co-managing partners at Casa Mono as chef and front-of-the-house Jill-of-all-trades, respectively, will run this joint too. • The Mediterranean exotica fetish continues with the opening last month of Naya, honing in on traditional Lebanese fare, at 1057 Second Ave. Owner Hady Kfoury, who worked at both Daniel and Payard but also is managing partner of three restaurants in Beirut, imported exec chef Rafic Nehme from Lebanon. • In July Neil Manacle, Bobby Flay's right-hand man for the past 16 years, left the Flay fold to do his own thing. Manacle teamed up with Jenny Moon (recently maître d' at Eighty One) to open Apiary (60 Third Ave.). Expect an exceptionally smart interior at this seasonal American venture; French modern furniture company Ligne Roset is partner and designer of the interior. • Sapa closed in June and was replaced last month as Nuela with Nuevo Latino pioneer Douglas Rodriguez as chef/partner. Brian Matzkov, who was an owner at Sapa, is Nuela partner. Adam Schop, who was at DeLaCosta in Chicago, is exec chef. • Cesare Casella shuttered Maremma in June but promised to reopen in a new yet-to-be-revealed location soon. Already in the works is Salumeria Rosi, an Italian marketplace and wine bar coming to the Upper West Side this fall. • That was fast! As of July Gary Robins is out as chef at Sheridan Square, which opened in June. Franklin Becker, most recently at Brasserie, is now at the helm. • Four Seasons Hotel New York has promoted Anthony Zamora from sous to exec sous chef. • Sad farewell: Rocky Aoki, founder of Benihana, passed away in July.
Scooch over, Comme Ça, Bouchon is coming to town! In 2009 Thomas Keller will extend his reach to L.A. with a Bouchon outpost in the Beverly Hills Garden Building (a new building owned by the city of Beverly Hills). Adam Tihany will design the bi-level 11,000-square-foot space, which will have a full-service restaurant on the first floor and a bakery on the second. Heading up the kitchen is Rory Hermann of The Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. • Opened last month is the fine dining destination Watermark, located in one of Ventura's more notable historic buildings (598 Main St.). Partners include music mogul Mark Hartley and Jim Rice (former partner of the recently shuttered Westside Cellar). At the stoves find Westside Cellar's Ray Luna. • The Long Beach–based Domaine Restaurants is thrice cloning its burger concept, 25 Degrees. The first opened in July in Beijing, in time for the summer Olympics. In the works are outposts in Newport Beach, CA (October) and Phoenix (early 2009). To aid in the expansion, Domaine tapped Parnell F. Delcham, whose background includes beverage director at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas), as chief operating officer for the entire restaurant group. • The Cheesecake Factory founder/CEO David Oyerton and chef Mohan Ismail, who worked at such notable NYC hot spots as Spice Market and Tabla, cooked up RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen, which opened in June at 10250 Santa Monica Blvd. (L.A.). • Gyenari (9540 Washington Blvd., Culver City), an upscale Korean barbecue spot that opened in July, is the brainchild of restaurateur Robert Benson and Korean-American entrepreneurs William Shin, Danny Kim, and Chris Kim. • Patina Restaurant Group, headquartered in LA and NYC, has taken over f&b operations at Mammoth Mountain, a four-season resort in the Sierras. • James Overbaugh left his exec chef post at Hotel Château du Sureau (Oakhurst, CA) to take the helm at The Peninsula Beverly Hills.
Marcus Samuelsson and Townhouse Restaurant Group made their first venture into the Windy City in June with the launch of C-House, a classic American seafood and chop house in the Affina Chicago hotel. At the helm find exec chef Seth Siegel-Gardner, who worked with both Scott Conant and Gordon Ramsay in NYC, and exec pastry chef Toni Roberts, late of Custom House. • The team behind BOKA and Landmark Bar & Grill, Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz, introduced Perennial in June at 1800 N. Lincoln Ave., which touts a market driven menu by exec chef Giuseppe Tentori (who also heads up BOKA) and chef de cuisine Ryan Poli (recently of Butter). • Rick Bayless is throwing his hat into the quick-service ring, with a yet-to-be-named Mexican sandwich spot (tortería), scheduled to open in spring 2009 around the corner from Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. • In June Sepia recruited Cindy Schuman, last seen at the recently shuttered Kevin Restaurant, to replace Kim Schwenke as pastry chef.
Former sous chef at Nostrana and Meriwethers Restaurant, David Siegel ventured out on his own in June with the unveiling of Belly Timber (3257 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.). The name is Victorian slang for food and sustenance, which in this case is new American, and the setting is a spiffed-up Victorian-era house. • Belly Timber is not to be confused with Belly (3500 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd), which is also new to the PDX dining scene as of June. Owners are husband and wife team chef Cameron Addy and gm Linda Addy. • The first restaurant to open in The Hub, a warehouse (3808 N. Williams Ave.) revamped and reborn as a 30-unit marketplace of restaurants, food artisans, and retailers, is Lincoln Restaurant, the brainchild of husband and wife chef Jenn Louis (chef/owner of Culinary Artistry, a catering business) and David Welsh, a local food writer.
Lee Grossman pulled up stakes in Palm Beach, FL, where he was chef at The Breakers and opted for a quieter life in Wilmington, where he opens the Pan-Asian The Bento Box (1121 Military Cutoff Rd.) this month. • Farm-to-table is not just PR spin for farmer Richard Holcomb (Holcomb's Coon Rock Farm, Hillsborough) and chef Sarig Agasi, who together own Raleigh's Zely & Ritz. The duo, along with Jamie DeMent (a devoted Coon Rock Farm field hand), are opening another such venue in Durham (this time with a more pronounced Southern accent), Eno Restaurant & Market. Pencil in a winter opening. • Relocating from NYC's Quality Meats to Winston Salem's Noble's Grille is Andrew Ward. He replaced Dale Ray as exec chef. • Sharpen your steak knives! The Ritz-Carlton Charlotte at Bank of America Center, a sparking new 147-room property opening in 2009, will boast a BLT Steak.
This month Errol Lawrence and Nancy Koide, owner/designers of OYA Restaurant & Lounge, launched a sleek little Asian eatery in D.C., SEI (444 Seventh St., N.W.), seating 63 at brown faux crocodile leather covered tables. Both chefs decamped from Perry's: sushi master Noriaki Yasutake (whose offbeat creations include a fish and chips Caesar salad roll) and Avinesh Ranav. • Michael Santoro, a NYC transplant from Boqueria, joined exec chef Brian McBride as chef de cuisine at Blue Duck Tavern in the Park Hyatt Washington. He replaces Mark Hellyar, newly promoted to chef de cuisine at the Oak Door at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo. • Amy Brandwein, who honed her skills at D.C.'s Galileo (currently closed for renovations) and Bebo Trattoria, is chef de cuisine at Fyve Restaurant Lounge at The Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City.
Next year Laura Cunningham, former director of operations for The French Laundry is opening her own place at 6725 Washington St. (formerly the Père Jeanty digs). Vita will be an Italian homage to her late Sicilian grandmother, Vita Morrell, and the menu will integrate family recipes. No chef has been named yet, but we hear that The Thomas Keller Restaurant Group will handle daily operations. • Next month Michael Chiarello, owner of NapaStyle who made his name as founding chef of Tra Vigne, will open Bottega Ristorante in the town's V Marketplace complex, which is also home to his newly opened flagship Napastyle retail store.
Debbie Gold, who sadly put the kibosh on 40 Sardines in March, didn't fish around long for a new gig. In July she was lured to the helm of The American Restaurant (Kansas City, MO), where she was co-exec chef with then-husband Michael Smith from 1994 to 2001. She replaces Celina Tio, who's heading to the East Coast to open a restaurant of her own. • Eric Kelly left his corporate gig as area chef for the Chicago-based Levy Restaurant Group to be exec chef/partner of Scape (St. Louis), replacing David Frattini. The twist here is that Kelly was part of the team that launched Scape when it first opened in 2007.
Julie Reiner, cocktail visionary/partner at the Flatiron Lounge, opened Clover Club in Cobble Hill (210 Smith St.) in June, where she serves classic punches, smashes, sours, and daisies, etc. in a lavish Victorian-inspired interior. • Nicholas Morgenstern, who handled sweets at Gilt and Gramercy Tavern, opened The General Greene in Fort Greene (229 DeKalb Ave.), where he's doing gentrified comfort foods, both sweet and savory. His buddy Ryan Skeen, formerly of Resto, is consulting. Deborah Williamson and chef Bryan Calvert, the husband and wife owners of Williamson Calvert event company, opened James in their Prospect Heights neighborhood (605 Carlton Ave.) in June. Here you'll find European-inflected American food in an antiqued setting.
Last month Ken Vedrinkski, chef/owner of Sienna Ristorante (Daniel Island), unveiled Trattoria Lucca in downtown Charleston (41-A Bogard St.), where he serves simple Italian fare at communal tables. • Matt Bolus, formerly of Ocean Room (Kiawah, SC), took over the Red Sky Grill (Seabrook Island, SC), gave it a contemporary makeover, and reopened last month as Red Sky, serving dishes such as trendy takes on pork belly and dressed-up oyster salad. • The new exec chef at The Inn at Palmetto Bluff (Palmetto Bluff, SC) is Christopher Blobaum, a California émigré and recent chef/partner at Wilshire Restaurant (Santa Monica). He steps in for Paul Wade.
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