WHEN Central Park Boathouse operator Dean Poll takes over Tavern on the Green from Jennifer LeRoy in January, the all-new restaurant and banquet palace Poll intends to create won’t come easily — or quickly.
“We anticipate up to 31/2 to 4 years for the whole job” to be finished, Poll revealed this week — and that was before yesterday’s news that powerful union Local 6 has called his contract offer “an insult and an atrocity,” possibly setting the stage for a labor war.
We called Poll not to bug him about unions, but to find out what kind of food he planned to serve. The new Tavern will be a restaurant, after all, although the media seems more interested in whether its bathrooms will be open to the public.
But Poll said of the menu question, “We’ve been trying to avoid the issue because it’s so early.” And when it comes to the changing of the guard little more than three months away, so many non-culinary questions keep popping up.
Poll said, “We have to go through every city agency” for approvals to redesign the landmark Central Park venue with 1,500 seats — a number likely to be trimmed as the existing rooms, likely shorn of their LeRoy-era chandeliers, brass, crystal and mirrors, are reconfigured for more flexibility — compared with fewer than half as many at the Boathouse.
“The Parks Department approved the concept, but now it must be put on paper and tuned,” Poll said. “Our exterior work has to be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and we’ve heard it can take up to a year.”
Then there’s Poll’s earlier pledge to keep Tavern open through the transition. He seemed to attach an asterisk to that. “We’re going to try,” he said. Now that Tavern is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, “it’s up to approval by the court.”
It’s one more riddle among many surrounding Poll’s impending takeover of the iconic venue — a choice the city made partly on the basis of his pledge to spend $25 million on a comprehensive redesign (which he and the city are keeping under wraps) to better integrate Tavern with the park.
There’s good reason to root for Poll to succeed. Tavern was running on empty and it needed fresh ideas.
And New York is running out of mega-size dining and event spaces. Windows on the World is long gone. The closed Rainbow Room might never reopen. The city can’t afford a black hole at the Tavern site, which commands a powerful hold on New Yorkers’ imaginations.
Poll made welcome capital improvements to the popular Boathouse, a crack operation that reels in more than half of Tavern’s $35 million annual revenue despite having far fewer seats than Tavern. Even so, the non-union Boathouse is a stroll in the park compared to the far larger and more complex Tavern, and Poll is wading in with appropriate humility.
“Every day I take a deep breath. There are overwhelming questions, and I take the responsibility very, very seriously,” he said.
Part of the responsibility is what’s on the plate. Except for a few years under the great, late chef Patrick Clark, Tavern was more about celebration than gastronomy. But the menu still matters in a gloriously reborn Central Park, where palates deserve to be treated with respect.
What about it, Mr. Poll?
“I’ve said it’s not going to be a theme restaurant, it’s going to be an American restaurant,” he said.
He smartly promises not to bring in a big-name chef to establish credibility. “All too often you get a celebrity chef, and then, two or three years down the line, he’s left for a ‘new challenge,’” Poll observed. (Six months is often more like it.)
Although nobody expected him to bring in a Larry Forgione, Poll’s instinct to avoid even a whiff of pretension is spot-on for a place so big, so event-oriented, and hamstrung by strict union rules. But how about some modern touches, like a raw bar?
“It’s still too early along,” Poll said. “We’ve thought about some kind of display cooking.”
Hey, Dean — you’ve got three months to figure it out!
At the Boathouse, straightforward American dishes — think herbed chicken paillard and jumbo lump crab cake — are competently prepared, but lack seasonal flair or creative presentation.
The approach works at the grand setting overlooking the lake, where you could serve cafeteria-quality grub — as Poll’s predecessors there did. But it might not be enough at the Tavern site, where customers have expected fancily composed dishes.
What kind of restaurants does Poll like personally?
“My favorite restaurant is the Four Seasons. I could eat there every day of my life.”
He added with a chuckle, “Not that I compare myself to the Four Seasons.”
scuozzo@nypost.com