When real estate firm Tishman Speyer was trying to persuade chefs to join what was becoming an impressive list of Rockefeller Center restaurants, it used many of the standard incentives in the business: lower rents, prime locations and help with construction costs.
But the firm was also selling a dream. “You can make Rockefeller Center the food epicenter for New York City,” said one chef who was told.
For longer than anyone can remember, Rockefeller Center’s place in the New York food conversation was essentially non-existent. Lots of people ate there, but no one talked about it.
In the past three years, 12 eat-in restaurants and seven other eating and drinking venues have opened in Rockefeller Plaza and on the esplanade, a network of underground corridors below it. Four more will arrive this year.
The larger restaurants bear the imprints of the chefs who run them, and while there are still a few chains on the concourse, they tend to be small and local, like Ace’s Pizza and Other Half Brewing. It’s too early to tell how many will turn out good. But people are talking about them.
People say that only tourists eat at Rockefeller Center. This is wrong. Thousands of New Yorkers pass through the complex every day. Some of us even eagerly anticipate it.
For starters, architecture is one of the most reliable thrills in the City. We see all the elements that give New York its character—the density, the grid, the crowds, the volume of the buildings, and their incredible heights. All this has been emphasized, so we feel its power. At the same time, it has been controlled, so we can really enjoy it.
Two of the best places to do this are new restaurants. Lodi, on the south side of the square, and Le Rock, on the north, are essentially the anchor tenants. Lodi is small, precise and Italian. Le Rock is big, busy and French. Each one moves like a clock. Sitting in either of the two restaurants, you know you are in New York and nowhere else.
The design of the square, with its sunken esplanade leading to the skating rink and the golden Prometheus, also channels energy into the underground spaces.
So Jupiter, the new Italian restaurant just off the strip, sees almost as much foot traffic as it would on a street corner in another part of the City. On opening day I tried the buckwheat noodles with potatoes, cabbage and fonduta, a dish I would have welcomed after skiing in the Alps. Across the road is NARO, owned by Ellia and Junghyun Park, who use tasting menus to showcase Korean culture.
And at Five Acres, diners sit in the open air behind a small railing as commuter train commuters pour by. It sounds annoying, but since chef Greg Baxtrom likes to serve oysters under a hood that flips up to reveal a swirl of smoke, it may be the travelers who are most distracted.
These seeded clusters of eating establishments are the seeds that developers spread in the ground when they want to attract a new breed of bird. Like birds, we can be impressed by the amount of food we have found, even when we know that the situation is not entirely natural.
By: Pete Welles
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6534402, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-17 23:00:07
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