Run it back
Ci Siamo, Café Boulud, Popina, Crown Shy, Bitcoin ETFs, Hollander & Lexer, women's boutiques, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Fired up at the mall
Last month at Ci Siamo, we were one of the first tables to sit for Wednesday lunch, not because we had targeted an 1130a reservation, but because it was all that was available one week in advance. No matter, the early start gave us a chance to see if the big room would come to life.
And come to life it did. By the time our first course was cleared, there wasn’t an empty seat. Two-tops of lawyers off the clock, parties of eight marking the season, old friends catching up — the vibe was celebratory, in a dining room built for a good time.
Ci Siamo, the latest from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, opened late 2021 in a new outdoor mall on the edge of Hudson Yards (“Manhattan West”). There’s a Whole Foods across the way and an ice rink in the center of the plaza. The second-story space is gorgeous, with oversize windows, precisely diffused lighting, and dramatic curves winding from the front room all the way to the back. It’s the kind of place where everyone looks good.
Chef Hillary Sterling’s food looks good, too. Glistening cast iron focaccia, tangles of tagliatelle, a whole wood-fired stuffed trout, all excellent. And even though the creamy caramelized onion torta and rigatoni alla gricia left us wanting an afternoon nap, we forgave them, because they, too, were delicious.
If it all feels a little familiar, blame the legions of restaurants (in this city and beyond) Meyer has inspired during his four decades in the game. Eventually, when you’re this good, your originals start to look like copies. And it was abundantly clear, in this bustling room full of glowing faces on an early Wednesday afternoon in a mall on the outskirts of Manhattan, that everyone was just fine with that. –Josh Albertson
→ Ci Siamo (Hudson Yards) • 440 W. 33rd St. • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • Intel
→ CAFÉ BOULUD FOREVER: A FOUND correspondent files an early report from the recently relocated and relaunched Café Boulud (Upper East Side): “The room is sexy — all banquettes around the perimeter. The vibe exudes the mid-century Manhattan of Mad Men. Service was great, the food all A+. The kanpachi starter was so ridiculous, I told my companion that it’s all I want to eat for the rest of my life.” Of note: the restaurant is now open for brunch on weekends.
→ SMILIE POPS UP AT POPINA: In comes news from Andrea Strong that the owners of FOUND reader favorite restaurants — Popina (Columbia St. Waterfront) and Gus’s Chop House (Carroll Gardens) — are parting ways. Upshot: a new chef in the kitchen at Popina. But first, starting next Monday, longtime Il Buco Alimentari chef (and expert pizzaiolo) Justin Smilie will step in for a six-week stint. Reserve now.
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: La Grenoullie’s building up for sale, restaurant may not reopen • Air’s Champagne Parlor is transitioning to Tokyo Listening Room, opening Wednesday • Yes, January is the best month to dine out in NYC • How Dept of Culture’s Ayo Balogun spends his Sundays • Woodside’s F. Ottomanelli may remind you of Hamburger America • This may be the best cocktail happy hour in NYC.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
Runner’s high
JAMES KENT • chef and managing partner • Saga Hospitality Group
Neighborhood you work in: Financial District
It’s Tuesday morning, where are you working?
The Crown High Run Club meets on either Monday or Tuesday morning. About 30 team members from Crown Shy, Saga, and Overstory convene at 70 Pine St. and explore different parts of Manhattan. Cooks and bartenders who have never run before are now training for marathons. Our controller ran the Berlin Marathon last fall. It’s a practice I brought with me from Eleven Madison Park. I enlisted a coach named Jerry Francois to lead the team, and it’s helped us up the ante. After the run, we head back to the restaurants, where I start my workday.
What’s the Tuesday morning scene at your workplace?
It’s the start of the workweek for a handful of the managers on our team who have Sundays and Mondays off. So it’s an early day, by restaurant standards. The office (on the 10th floor of 70 Pine Street) starts to fill up by noon. I’m typically in the kitchen at either Crown Shy or Saga by 2 p.m. to start meetings or tastings with the team.
What’s on the agenda for today?
These days, I spend about half my time operating the restaurants at 70 Pine, and the other half working on new projects in the pipeline. This afternoon, I’m meeting with the architects and designers at Modellus Novus to review the latest renderings for our new restaurant at 360 Park Ave. South. Then I dip into Crown Shy before service to meet with our head of R&D, Justin Osorio, to polish off the menu we’re planning to prepare at the Cayman Cookout next week.
What’s for lunch?
If I can squeeze in a proper lunch meeting, lunch is at abcV at the Tin Building. I live and work in the Financial District, so the Tin Building is a neighborhood utility.
Any plans tonight?
This week, I’ll be at friends-and-family for Coqodaq, the new spot from the Cote team. –Photo: Diego Padillama
WORK • Crypto Report
Boxed in
This week, the SEC is expected to rule on whether financial services firms can offer Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Anticipation of the long-awaited thumbs-up is driving a run-up in BTC prices (+70% over the last 90 days) and may be the signal that cryptocurrency has finally gone mainstream.
To be sure, it’s a big deal. But as Bloomberg’s Matt Levine notes, it isn’t exactly the sort of barrier-breaking that true crypto believers had in mind:
If your interest in crypto is ‘crypto keeps coming up with fun new ways to do finance’… this is pretty boring. Crypto’s fun new way to do finance is to put Bitcoin in a box and sell you shares of the box; the goal is to transmute Bitcoin — this decentralized disintermediated trustless novel form of money that was meant to replace the banks and brokerages — into regular stocks.
Still, even as the era of institutional boredom dawned, SEC chairman Gary Gensler posted a short tweetstorm re-asserting crypto investing’s risks, painting a scene of “bogus coin offerings, Ponzi & pyramid schemes, & outright theft.”
Moments earlier, in a new round of filings, the ETF applicants — big firms like BlackRock and Fidelity — had promised their own version of drama: a coming war over… fund fees. Some will go as low as 0.24%, less than half the U.S. ETF average. "This is unprecedented," Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at data analytics firm VettaFi, told Reuters. "Having a real race right out of the gate in that context is going to be ... dramatic and exciting." Crypto 2024, still wild. –Josh Albertson
WORK LINKS: DoorDash doubles down at 200 Fifth Ave. • Prada buys pair of Midtown high-rises for $822M • Success Academy expands HQ to 94K SF at 120 Wall St. • Why retail brands are splurging on real estate • Carta under fire after cap table breach • PE in ‘24: ‘It’s going to be a slog’.
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GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Makers gonna make
Slow fashion purveyor Hollander & Lexer is back in business, peddling a locally made, curated menswear collection at its store in The Makers Guild at Industry City.
On hiatus for 10 years, the shop offers its classic range of men's shirting, featuring Japanese cottons and linens, as well as leather goods and accessories. (There’s also a selection of vinyl and the photography of downtown chronicler Fernando Natalici.)
Coming this spring: the re-introduction of casual jackets and trousers, stylish but easy to wear and maintain. –Brad Inman
→ Shop: Hollander & Lexer (Industry City) • 51 35th St., Brooklyn • open Thurs.-Sun. • mention “FOUND” for 10% off.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: The J. Crew men's concept store on the Bowery has closed • The Met bets big on retail brand extension • The second coming of the shag-pile carpet • The next big luxury brand will be stealth.
GOODS & SERVICES • The Nines
Fashion boutiques, women’s
