Eataly, an Italian-themed food hall that includes both market-style stalls and restaurants, is planned to open at 4 World Trade Center amidst a massive restaurant boom in Lower Manhattan.
BY COLIN MIXSON
Downtown’s really cookin’ with gas. Celebrity chefs are flocking to Lower Manhattan, with more than a dozen high-profile eateries planned to open within the next 18 months, and the ritzy-restaurant invasion is a fine-dining phenomenon unlike anything else in the city, according to a local real estate expert.
Battery Park City’s Le District, a French food hall fusing high-class dining with market-style shopping that opened last year at Brookfield Place, will soon be joined by its famed Tuscan-themed counterpart Eataly, which will open with its own slate of Italian restaurants, cafes and markets at 4 WTC as early as this spring.
The nearby Oculus of the WTC Transportation Hub will host award-winning cuisinier Daniel Boulud’s latest eponymous Manhattan eatery, Epicerie Boulud, which locals can expect to start serving up sizzling French dishes when the hub’s Westfield-operated retail component comes online sometime later this year.
Jose Garces, who was anointed by the Food Network as the champion of Iron Chef and won the James Beard Foundation’s coveted “Best-Chef, Mid-Atlantic” award, will expand his contemporary tapas joint, Amada, into Brookfield Place in the coming months.
French chef extraordinaire Jean-Georges Vongerichten will be conquering the South Street Seaport with not one, but two namesake franchises, including a 10,000-squarefoot restaurant on Pier 17, and a gargantuan 40,000- square-foot food hall in the historic Tin Building, expected sometime in 2017.
Celebrity Chef Tom Colicchio is checking in to the Financial District’s Beekman Hotel, where he’ll open his latest restaurant, Fowler and Wells, in late spring or early summer this year.
Colicchio will be joined at the Beekman by renowned restaurateur Keith McNally, who will be taking reservations at his French-style bistro Augustine at the iconic hotel sometime in the coming months.
Nammos by the Sea, a stateside offshoot of the famed Nammos restaurant on Mykonos Island in the Aegean Sea, will open atop the Battery Maritime Building sometime next year.
British Chef April Bloomfield, whose restaurants The Spotted Pig and The Breslin Bar and Dining Room both hold Michelin Star ratings, plans on opening a new venture atop 70 Pine Street — a 1932 office tower being redeveloped into high-end apartments.
Molecular gastronomy pioneer Wylie Dufresne will bring his precision cuisine to the AKA Wall Street hotel at 84 William St. between Maiden Ln. and Platt St. later this year.
Austrian chef Eduard “Edi” Frauneder has plans to open a restaurant at 109 Washington St. between Carlisle and Rector Sts.. Frauneder was on the team behind two beloved East Village offerings — Edi and the Wolf and the cocktail bar The Third Man.
Steak lovers can head over to the Four Seasons Hotel on Barclay St. with the summer opening of CUT by Wolfgang Puck, whose Emmy-nominated Food Network show enjoyed a five-season run, but who has yet to debut a restaurant in the Big Apple.
Celebrated Japanese-Peruvian eatery Nobu is forsaking its Tribeca digs for Fidi, and will start serving meals from its fusion menu sometime early next year.
The unprecedented wave of high-end eateries is largely driven by the booming residential market in the Financial District, which has more than 6,000 apartments currently under construction.
The increased residential density, coupled with more than 300,000 white-collar workers and tourists drawn by attractions such as the World Trade Center and the South Street Seaport, makes the area a highly attractive venue for classy eats, according to local realtor Luis Vazquez.
“It has a built-in set of customers day and night,” he said. “During the day, you have office workers and tourists, and at night you have the well-heeled residents. They’ve all built each other up. It’s the fastest growing neighborhood in the city and, in the next year and a half, it’s going to be a dining destination in its own right.”
