DANNY Meyer and Laurent Tourondel, look out – a French restaurant that’s a kind of Shake Shack of steak is coming to town.
For 44 years, Parisians have lined up at Le Relais de Venise in the 17th Arrondissement (no reservations, merci) to feast on one dish only – sliced entrecote (rib steak) with fries and salad.
A franchised replica opened three years ago on London’s Marleybone Lane, where locals “queue up” for a half hour or more.
“The queue has become part of our legend, part of our character,” claims Madame Thierry Todillot, who runs the Paris original.
Now, the café is coming to America. It will open next spring with 180-plus seats at Rudin Management’s 590 Lexington Ave. at 52nd Street. The lease for 4,000 square feet at the heavily trafficked corner was signed yesterday.
Steve Elghanayan owns the London franchise and the planned new Manhattan one with his brother, Michael. (They are cousins of the Rockrose Elghanyans but have no business affiliation with them).
He explains the unique Relais de Venise concept this way:
Waitresses ask customers how they want their steak cooked. Each order comes with sauce (described as “mysterious” by the Paris Zagat Survey), french fries and walnut salad. Although there’s a choice of desserts, wine and drinks, there are no other main-course options and no appetizers.
“It will be an identical replica,” Steve Elghanayan said. “Down to the tablecloths, floors and murals, and black uniforms and white aprons, very French, worn by the waitresses.”
A meal will cost about $25 without dessert or drinks and Elghanayan expects an average tab of around $38 a head before tip and tax.
The Paris original has 120 seats and serves 600-700 customers a day, he said.
The Lexington Avenue site has been vacant since early this year. The asking rent was around $200 a square foot.
Lou Somoza and Samantha Rudin, daughter of Rudin Management President Bill Rudin, negotiated for the landlord. Northwest Atlantic’s Jacqueline Clangor repped the Elghanayan brothers.
You have to wonder what ails the deep thinkers who’ve pushed down SL Green’s share price on the theory that “there is a negative impact associated with” the company’s concentration on Manhattan.
Bet against Green if you want. But the Manhattan office market historically is far more resilient than in lesser American cities, where vacancy rates of 15 percent have not been uncommon even when New York’s is below 10 percent.
Not even 9/11 and its aftermath could knock the island off its perch.
Of course, Green is keeping a wary eye on its largest tenants – among them, Viacom, which might leave 1515 Broadway for Hudson Square when its lease is up in 2010, or Citibank, which Green’s leasing director, Steve Durels, calls “a dominant tenant in our portfolio.”
But those who micro-scrutinize every possible move-out or shrinkage forget that tenants come and go all the time. In fact, vacancies have been running below 3 percent in SL Green’s 24 million-odd square feet of space in 29 Manhattan buildings.
That percentage just got a bit smaller, thanks to four new leases signed recently totaling more than 170,000 square feet at four addresses.
Durels said, “all the new rents are reflective of the current market. They were not materially discounted from where we were doing deals for last four to six months, and each represents a significant increase over what the prior tenant was paying.”
In the largest deal, Wurk Environments LLC, a new provider of flexible, short- term office and conference space, signed for 65,000 square feet at 1515 Broadway, which is undergoing $160 million in capital improvements.
“We were asking $85 a foot and they paid close to it,” Durels said, meaning within 5 percent and 7 percent of the ask.
At Green’s 1185 Sixth Ave., News America, a division of New York Post parent News Corp., just added 54,500 square feet to the 80,000 it signed for earlier this year.
Meanwhile, accounting firm Eisner LLP added 34,000 feet at Green’s 750 Third Ave. and the Republic of Poland took 18,000 feet at 750 Third Ave. as a new home for its Permanent Mission to the UN.