Tabla Retrenches

Union Square Hospitality Group has announced that Tabla, the Indian restaurant at Madison Park, will eliminate its casual downstairs sibling, Bread Bar at Tabla. From now on, both spaces will serve the identical menu.

When we visited the Bread Bar in June, Tabla was serving a $59 prix fixe. On a Friday evening, the space looked almost empty, while the Bread Bar was bustling. The new menu (PDF here) strongly resembles the Bread Bar menu that we dined from that evening. It has a wide range of à la carte choices from $9–22 (Naan just $4), along with tasting menus at either $54 or $79.

So while USHG says that the Bread Bar has been discontinued, it’s actually the fine-dining option that’s going away. The new combined menu is basically the Bread Bar menu. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as we liked most of the food we had there.

But it does appear to be a retrenchment.