Danny Meyer’s Tabla to Close

Restauranteur Danny Meyer announced today that Tabla will close at the end of the year. It is the first time Meyer has folded a restaurant since his remarkable run of success began with Union Square Cafe in 1885.

Tabla was a big risk in 1998, aiming to prove that nouveau Indian cuisine could work in a fine-dining environment. Its fancy upstairs dining room had a relatively expensive prix fixe format usually reserved for high-end French restaurants. It won three stars from Ruch Reichl, and a fanatic following thereafter.

As time went on, Tabla faded out of the conversation, while its next-door neighbor, Eleven Madison Park—which Meyer also owns—ascended to four-star glory. There were certainly signs of trouble a year ago, when Tabla ditched the prix fixe and installed its more casual “bread bar” menu in the main dining room.

Remarkably, Tabla and Eleven Madison Park opened within weeks of one another. The two are divided by a wall that couldn’t be removed in the landmarked building, which led to the seemingly harebrained idea of opening two fine dining restaurants practically simultaneously, adjacent to one another. Nobody can be happy about Tabla’s demise; still, twelve years is a pretty damned good run.

Meyer told the Times that it was a struggle to fill 280 seats every night. Restauranteurs’ own explanations are seldom the full story: no one ever wants to admit that their own mistakes could have contributed to the failure. Whatever the reason, Tabla will soon be no more.

He also said he is keeping it open through December 30 to give his staff time to find other positions. The fall and holiday seasons are usually the best months for the restaurant industry, and no doubt Tabla fans will want to go back for one last fling. Meyer will probably have no trouble breaking even for three more months.

What he will do with the space is unknown. It’s hard to imagine Meyer ceding prime Madison Square real estate to another operator. But that very large space is expensive, which limits the kinds of concepts that can succeed there.

Bouley Upstairs to Close

Update: The Tribeca Citizen now reports that Bouley Upstairs will turn into a catering and private event space, with guest chefs cooking on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

Update 2: After multiple rounds of clarifications, the Times reports that the space will be called Bouley Studio, and that the special dinners ($75 prix fixe) will feature Japanese chefs and will be served only on Thursdays. Perhaps this is a tryout for the Japanese concept that will become (or was to have become) Brushstroke.

Today, Tribeca Citizen has the surprising news that Bouley Upstairs will close this Saturday.

Nobody saw this coming. In tough economic times, usually it’s the high-end restaurants that are most vulnerable. Instead, the eponymous Bouley, the chef’s three-star extravaganza, will now be his only restaurant.

Earlier this year, Eater.com reported that Bouley’s $2.5 million condo (in the same building as his restaurant) was in foreclosure.

With the closure of Bouley Upstairs, Bouley now controls three restaurant spaces that are empty, including Bouley Bakery, which closed in April, and the former Danube and Secession space, which closed a year ago.

At one point, Bouley planned to open a Japanese restaurant, Brushstroke, in the former Delphi space. But that was three years ago. He later said that it would open in the failed Secession space, but with all of his financial troubles, it is hard to see how that could happen.

As for Bouley Upstairs, we found it slightly over-rated, and certainly not worth the two stars Frank Bruni gave it. But in the current restaurant economy, you would not expect such a place to fail, if management were the least bit intelligent.

But it is perhaps notable that Bouley Upstairs had entirely disappeared from the culinary conversation. On a more recent visit, when I sampled the burger, it seemed like Bouley had turned it into a diner, with the cuisines of many genres and nations represented. That might not have been the wisest strategy.

R.I.P. Knife + Fork

Update: Knife + Fork re-opened as Percy’s Tavern Knife + Fork in September 2010, three months after it closed. They are now located at 210 Avenue A (13th Street).

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Knife + Fork in the East Village closed after service on Saturday evening.

After both of my visits (here, here), I was impressed with the quality and ambition of the food at a modest price-point. But it’s telling that after four years in business, the tasting menu was still just $45. The chef, Damien Bressel, would surely have raised it if he could.

The last time I was there, nine months ago, the dining room was nearly empty on a Wednesday evening, and Bressel was doubling as server and host (in addition to chef), as his only waiter had called in sick.

It seemed a bit sad even then, but somehow he hung on before finally throwing in the towel. We look forward to his next project.

Sad News: Eighty One closing

Steve Cuozzo in the Post has the sad news that Eighty One will be closing after service on Sunday, April 4. Cuozzo, who was always a fan of the place, thought that it served “possibly the best food in the Upper West Side’s history.”

Chef Ed Brown summarized Eighty One’s problem eloquently:

We started as a destination restaurant in a destination location. When the world fell apart, we changed to cope with it, with a lower-priced menu and more accessible food. But we weren’t able to change people’s perceptions that we were a special-occasion place — which is why we were always full for special occasions, but not on a daily basis.

He might also have mentioned Frank Bruni’s respectful but not ecstatic two-star review—probably one less than it deserved—and the fact that the hotel entrance was hidden by scaffolding for much of the two years the restaurant existed.

I Don’t Get It: Psilakis Done at Anthos

Update: Anthos has closed. Owner Donatella Arpaia sold the space, which will become a steakhouse run by the Ben & Jack’s family.

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Frank Bruni, back on his old beat, reports today that Michael Psilakis is out at Anthos, where he was chef–partner with front-of-house guru Donatella Arpaia.

This is the third split in their long-protracted divorce, with Arpaia having previously backed out of Psilakis’s Gus & Gabriel Gastropub, and he in turn having left her Italian restaurant, Mia Dona. Both of those moves made some sense, as Psilakis wasn’t really an Italian chef, and Arpaia probably felt she had little to add at Gus & Gabriel.

This time, I don’t get it.

Anthos derived its prestige from Psilakis’s name. Like many high-end restaurants, it is surely suffering during the recession. But given that it is remaining open, Arpaia is better off with Psilakis than a chef no one has heard of. It will probably lose its Michelin star, as restaurants normally do when a chef leaves.

Similarly, Psilakis has now lost the only good restaurant in his portfolio. Such places are seldom money-spinners in themselves, but their cachet leads to other things, like cookbooks and TV deals, and they lend gravitas to the chef’s lower-end places. Think of how much Jean-Georges Vongerichten gets from sprinkling pixie dust on his large collection of restaurants, with his flagship as a loss-leader.

Instead of being a Michelin-star chef, Psilakis is now just a guy turing out mediocre comfort food. What does he do for an encore? Sling burgers?

Olana Closes

Today, Eater confirms that Olana has closed. The handwriting was on the wall after Olana filed for bankruptcy in December. We were surprised it lasted this long; bankruptcy is not a step that many restaurants survive.

We visited Olana twice (here, here), and enjoyed ourselves. This was a restaurant that deserved to make it.

So what killed Olana? At its fairly expensive price point, it needed to be a destination restaurant. But it attracted few reviews—crucially, none from the Times. In New York, Adam Platt awarded two stars, which was about right.

We’re no fans of Platt’s, but we have to agree that he had Olana nailed, when he described the décor as “overwrought,” and observed that “the location might be a killer.” We rather liked Olana’s décor, but we’re old-fashioned that way, and we realize that the average diner these days is put off by white tablecloths and velvet chairs. Such places can still succeed, but there isn’t much margin for error.

As for the location, it could hardly be worse: Madison Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets, a transit and culinary dead zone.

We would add that most diners probably had no idea what the name “Olana” even referred to. (It’s the Hudson Valley home of the artist Frederic Edwin Church.) The menu didn’t really evoke the Hudson Valley theme particularly well. If that was the idea, another name might have conveyed it better.

Harbour Sinks

As first noted Wednesday in the Feed, and confirmed today on Eater, West Soho’s Harbour has closed.

We enjoyed our meal there in June, but noted at the time that this restaurant could be in for stormy sailing. Fine dining has consistently struggled in this part of town, which is ill-served by mass transit, lacks a large residential community, and has no major attractions to lure pedestrians.

As I’ve noted in review after review, there is no reason why destination restaurants couldn’t succeed here, but there would need to be a game-changer—the kind of restaurant that makes people want to go out of their way. Harbour did not turn out to be that restaurant.

We were on Harbour’s mailing list, and in recent months received one “special offer” after another. Many of these started to seem like desperation, and we figured the end was near.

We feel for the owners, who dropped major coin on the build-out: reportedly $4 million. The curse of Hudson Square has struck again.

When a Cru Becomes a Vin de Pays

Update: Sure enough, and as we suspected, Cru’s strategy for re-making itself failed. We take no pleasure in this; it was just so obviously desperate. Cru closed in the summer of 2010. Its replacement is Lotus of Siam.

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Cru, one of the few unabashedly old-school restaurants to have opened within the last five years, has finally decided how to replace Chef Shea Gallante, who left in June.

The Times reports that Todd Macdonald is the new chef. He had been with the restaurant in 2004, when it opened, but left two years ago to join a catering firm. Robert Bohr, one of the owners, said, “We wanted food that was easier, simpler, faster, cheaper and definitely tastier, which is what we think Todd will do.”

He added that they’ll consider remodeling after the new year, “to make the place less fancy.” In the meantime, prices on what is probably the city’s best wine list have been slashed by 30 percent across the board.

When we visited in last year, we noted that Cru was one of the few restaurants that actually got fancier. Servers’ all-black uniforms were replaced with suits; an à la carte menu was replaced with an $84 prix fixe, and the tasting menu nearly doubled in price, from $65 to $125.

This is by no means a crazy strategy. Eleven Madison Park did the same, and its reward was four stars from Frank Bruni. Just try getting a last-minute reservation these days. But at Cru, for whatever reason, that strategy did not survive the recession.

We understand why Cru has decided to go downscale. The reasons are obvious enough to not require explanation.

At the same time, we have our doubts. Even with a 30 percent discount, Cru’s wine list has hundreds of bottles with three and four-digit prices. Most people willing to spend that kind of money want food of a certain quality.

If you can afford a $400 Bordeaux, do you really care if the entrées are five bucks cheaper?

Vong Bites the Dust

Update: The space will become the third NYC branch of Wolfgang’s Steakhouse. Clever man, that Wolfgang.

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Eater.com reports that Vong will close on Saturday.

General consensus was perhaps embodied in Frank Bruni’s takedown three years ago, when he knocked the restaurant down from three stars to one. It was certainly no longer relevant to the food community. A discussion thread on Mouthfuls.com hadn’t seen a post in 5½ years.

The closure means that I no longer have to fret over my three-star review, posted in 2005. I’ve become a tougher grader over the years. Though I am sure I would still enjoy that meal if I had it today, I probably woudn’t give it three stars any more. And if reports like Bruni’s can believe, even that meal was better than Vong could regularly deliver these days.

After Saturday, Vong is no more.

Pamplona Closes

The Times reports that Alex Ureña has closed Pamplona.

The space has been home to two upscale Spanish restaurants over the last four years, both helmed by Chef Ureña. The eponymous Ureña, won two stars from Frank Bruni in early 2006, but the dowdy-looking space was at war with the three-star food the chef was trying to serve.

In 2007, after a brief makeover, it re-opened as Pamplona, slightly downscale in terms of both price and culinary ambition. It once again won two stars from Frank Bruni.

We loved the food at Ureña, but like most people, found the atmosphere lacking. We found the less-ambitious Pamplona still very good, though slightly undermined by the service. Perhaps like many diners, we never felt the need to return.

Despite two fairly positive Times reviews, the restaurant never gained traction in either of its incarnations. It wasn’t in a lively neighborhood, nor could it get much residential traffic on the dull commercial block it occupied.