Bar Boulud will soon have a next-door kissing cousin: a French-inspired, grill-themed restaurant that Daniel Boulud plans to open this winter at the corner of Broadway and 64th Street. Among other things, the 4,000-square-foot eatery will boast a “nice, big bar meant for drinking” — unlike Bar Boulud, which for all its wine-and-charcuterie pleasures, has no bar.
Boulud’s spokeswoman, Georgette Farkas, says the new place will have a “grilling concept with a little bit of a healthy accent, a partly open kitchen and Mediterranean and other influences.” Thomas Schlesser — who created the looks for Bar Boulud and DBGB — will design the 110-seat dining room, a 24-seat lounge and a 16-stool bar.
The restaurant isn’t named yet. (Doesn’t DBar & Grill sound logical?) But by any name, the sixth Manhattan venue from one of the world’s greatest chefs marks another advance for the eating scene in Lincoln Square, the blossoming corridor astride Broadway north of Columbus Circle to 72nd Street.
Boulud originally planned to expand Bar Boulud into the side-street portion of the former bank space next door. But he recently leased the corner as well, and decided to launch an entirely new restaurant facing Lincoln Center’s resplendent, reborn plaza and fountain.
He isn’t alone. In September, Patina Restaurant Group is launching a $20 million eatery headed by former Per Se executive chef Jonathan Benno on the Lincoln Center campus itself, tucked under the new elevated lawn on the North Plaza.
And BR Guest chief Stephen Hanson will soon turn the current O’Neals’ on 64th Street near Broadway into a sea-monster-size Atlantic Grill with 250 seats. “We’ll be in great company,” Hanson says. “The neighborhood always had great energy, but nothing like today’s.”
The blocks near Lincoln Center once were of a piece with the rest of the Upper West Side, but now feel ever more distinct from it. First came new condos, then movie theaters and Barnes & Noble, followed by glamorous luxury apartment tower 15 Central Park West.
Broadway’s malls were landscaped in the manner of Europe’s great boulevards. Lincoln Center emerged from years of construction looking newly minted. Alice Tully Hall shed its travertine skin for welcoming glass. And the equally transparent Apple store a block north is “like Mecca,” says chef Ed Brown, who oversees the menu at thriving Ed’s Chowder House in the Empire Hotel.
The dining climate between Broadway and Columbus Avenue improved with the street environment. Lincoln Square Business Improvement District President Monica Blum says that, in 14 years, “Our restaurant scene has changed more dramatically than anything else.”
Telepan has matured into one of the city’s best market-driven American bistros. (Love those soft-shell crabs!) Compass has the best lobster deal in town (a three-pounder for $39). Terrance Brennan’s Picholine remains the standard for classically influenced Mediterranean cooking.
There’s variety: Mexican at Rosa Mexicano, Italian at Gabriel’s, Indian at Sapphire, French-American at Cafe Luxembourg, Jewish deli at Lansky’s and Japanese, well, pretty much everywhere. For nostalgic eaters, strong whiffs of the old days live on at the West Side Diner and Gray’s Papaya.
Nowhere do things feel as vibrant as along the “restaurant row” on the east side of Broadway between 63rd and 64th Street, where in addition to Bar Boulud, longtime favorites Fiorello and Josephina continue to draw big crowds indoors and out. The latter two are particularly spacious with a festive air.
So is Shun Lee West nearby — after nearly 25 years, still the best Chinese on the Upper West Side. It’s also an amusing time warp with its 1980s take on the faux-exoticism of decades earlier: an endless, papier-mache dragon entwines a disco-era dining chamber with black lacquer trim and stepped seating levels.
Let’s hope they never change it. But the culinary scene was due for new blood, and Boulud and Benno seem ready to bring it to a rolling boil.