The magical afterlives of great restaurants
I’M NOT a big believer in feng shui, and my proof was always the big pillar that stood smack in the middle of Batard, one of my favorite restaurants in New York City. My elementary knowledge of Chinese geomancy told me the structure would divert the forces of the universe that are key to the prosperity of an enterprise. But Batard defied feng shui: It was an immediate triumph, winning the James Beard best new restaurant award in 2015. Indeed, Drew Nieporent — a partner at Nobu — had had two other successful restaurants in the space where he opened Batard: Montrachet and Corton, established in 1985 and 2008, respectively.
But in May, Batard closed. Did feng shui finally catch up with it?
If so, it wasn’t the only victim. There have been so many restaurants closing lately that I am taking it personally — especially because several have been favorite haunts of mine in both New York and London. Apart from Batard on West Broadway in Manhattan, Marta on 29th Street is gone. After a 10-year run, Contra on Orchard Street will call it a day on Oct. 28. And on Monday morning came word of the end of Native, which I’ve followed from location to location over the last five years, most recently to its cozy hidden garden in London’s Mayfair.
I’ve rued the mortality of restaurants before, so I’ll just glancingly cite the factors that are worse than bad feng shui: small margins, rising real estate costs, labor shortages, scandal, inflation, regulation, the effects of COVID, and exhaustion. Any one of those would be challenging for a small business — and a single restaurant might face any combination or all of them at once. For regulars like myself, the toll is psychic: These are places I turn to in order to find happiness again and again. The bond is not just culinary but communal and spiritual.
It’s the nature of that last tie that gives me hope. Nothing lasts forever, but something of good restaurants does go on: Talent is transmitted. Restaurants have afterlives because of people. Skills are taught; bad baggage disposed of; legacies formed.
For example, Batard gave Markus Glocker (who withstood the tough kitchens of Gordon Ramsay) his first big shot at running a major restaurant. He’s since become the chef of Koloman, the acclaimed Viennese restaurant in the Ace Hotel in the Flatiron District.
Nieporent’s business partner John Winterman would bring his immense front-of-the-house skills (originally honed at Daniel Boulud’s flagship Manhattan restaurant) to Francie in Brooklyn. In the meantime, Glocker and Winterman’s culinary and hospitality philosophies have been transmitted to the scores of people who have worked with them.
That kind of transmission of experience and talent goes beyond the boundaries of a city. I’m always heartened to discover how survivors of shuttered restaurants have thrived outside of New York City. I mourned when Tertulia in Greenwich Village closed in 2018 but am ecstatic that its chef de cuisine, Neil Zabriskie, is getting accolades for Regards in Portland, Maine. The beautiful, glass-encased Untitled at the Whitney Museum was shut down in 2021; but husband-and-wife veterans of the restaurant — sommelier Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek — have just won Food & Wine magazine’s restaurant of the year award for Birdie’s, their self-described “fine casual” in Austin, Texas. Good culinary genes travel well.
So do tenacious restaurants. Before it closed last week, Native had lived in four different locations. I hadn’t arrived in the UK yet when chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes and Imogen Davis opened and closed the first restaurant with the name in Covent Garden; but I got to enjoy their warmth and cuisine at the Borough Market incarnation. Shuttered like almost every place else by the pandemic, it opened briefly and spectacularly in a former munitions factory on Osea island off Kent before ending up in the elegant little space behind the posh retailer Brown in Mayfair. I am certain that Davis and Tisdall-Downes — who got the restaurant bug while he foraged for Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York — will start Native somewhere else and I will be there.
Compared to Native, Contra stayed solidly in place through its decade on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was a magnet for influential restaurateurs, most of them friends of Contra’s co-owners and chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske Valtierra. Restaurants from Tokyo (Den) to Paris (Septime) to London (Lyle’s) would pop up in their space, introducing New Yorkers to places they’d never tried but would then place on their must-eat lists in future travel. I’ve been going to Contra (and observing its growing pains) practically since it opened — indeed, I walked out intending never to return during my first visit because of the service. Instead, I returned week after week, won over by their inventive and delicious fare; I have been rewarded with love, friendship and culinary advice. It’s going to be the hardest goodbye.
Jeremiah and Fabian promise a new venture in the Contra space. But maybe it’s time to travel: Bring Contra to London. I’m not an expert but I’m sure you’ll find good feng shui here. — Bloomberg Opinion
