New Restaurant for Times Square
 

(We hope it gets a better review than Guy Fieri)
Taken from the NY Times

URBO

Eugene Kadomskiy, a restaurant magnate with more than 70 places in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, is not starting small in New York. Next week, he plans to open a 26,000-square-foot behemoth in a Times Square high-rise, with 600 seats on three levels. Having explored the city’s restaurants, he said this location gives him a chance to fill what he regards as a vacuum in the dining scene. “New York is the culinary capital of the world, but there’s very little in the way of good food in the Times Square area,” Mr. Kadomskiy, 39, said through an interpreter last week. “It’s a paradox.”
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Times Topic: Off the Menu

The project, done in a rough-hewed industrial style, is costing his company, Makers Lab, $29 million. To execute his vision, he has hired as chef Brian Young, who started as a cook at the Quilted Giraffe and worked at Le Bernardin. With two years’ experience as executive chef at Tavern on the Green, Mr. Young is not likely to be daunted by Urbo’s sprawl. Mr. Kadomskiy said Mr. Young’s food will feature local ingredients, and the menu will list the purveyors.

At the entrance to the complex, whose name is a mash-up of urban and bohemian, there are food carts for takeaway items. Beyond is a casual 150-seat area with three glass-enclosed kitchens. There’s a Blue Bottle coffee shop off to one side. A spiral staircase and a circular elevator lead upstairs for more-formal dining in a 300-seat room with latticework and greenery, and to a big bar overlooking 42nd Street. As for how New York will welcome him, he said, “It’s too late to be nervous.” (The ground floor opens Tuesday): 11 Times Square (42nd Street and Eighth Avenue), 212-542-8950, urbonyc.com.

Executive Chef at Tavern on the Green - there's a definite reason not to go.

Forgive me but I have to lie down..I am disoriented after reading........

“New York is the culinary capital of the world, but there’s very little in the way of good food in the Times Square area. . .It’s a paradox.”

So this guy's idea of "good food" is to build a megaplex and try to serve thousands of people at once? Talk about a paradox!

Well, it couldn't get worse reviews than Fieri's festival of craptacular nonsense, could it? I don't think it's impossible to do decent--fresh, seasonal--food on a large scale, and I admire the effort to bring better food to touristy Times Square. I've always hated the tacit assumption that the masses who visit NYC and end up in Times Square want to eat atTGIF's.

Yes, but a chef from Tavern on the Green - that hotbed of confused tourists and inedible AND expensive food.

I actually had a decent lunch at the old Tavern on the Green--not memorably good, but not at all bad, either. So I have had to agree to disagree with those on this board who had bad meals there.

Plus, it's important to specify which TotG one is talking about, now that it has reopened under new management.

Since it has reopened the prices have gone way up - and he service and quality of the food is apparntly as bad as ever - based on a bunch of online reviews - and one visit by us.

We went for brunch and despite the outrageous prices had to wait for more than 30 minutes to be seated (apparently slow service to previous brunchers caused the backup) and had food that was bad even for the local diner (cold, under- or over-cooked, poorly seasoned and just nasty). Server apologized for delays an we were offered comped drinks - but don't drink more than one at brunch and were not about to wait another 30 minutes for a desert that looked like it came from the supermarket.

But odd that, apart from time at Le Bernardin, the CV of the chef mentions little between his time at QuiltedGiraffe and Tavern.

The Russian investors seem to be moving in; there is a good restaurant financed by Russians on West 57th Street:


http://www.betony-nyc.com/


We've had very good meals there and would recommend, in the higher price points...overlaps between 11 Madison Park and NoMad, and Betony.

OPened just in time to capture the wallets of the "new people" moving into all the billionaire buildings in the West 57th Street corridors.


There is a restaurant in North Carolina (Bernardin's in Winston Salem) that makes much of its connection to Le Bernardin, but in reality, has zero connection. Makes you wonder, sometimes, about the resumes passed about my the pr agencies..

One look at the menus and it becomes obvious that this place has little to do with Le Bernardin in NYC:

http://www.bernardinsfinedining.com/...er_entrees.pdf

I remember reading about a local restaurant with a chef who "trained with Thomas Keller of The French Laundry". It finally came out that he once attended an afternoon workshop led by Keller at a Food "convention". You really have to take credits with a huge grain of salt!

Robert Irvine, a British celebrity chef, was fired from The Food Network because he lied on his resume; among the false claims was that he cooked for the Royal Family, lol. He lost his cookware deal with HSN, a planned restaurant in St. Pete (FL) was scuttled...

Now he has two successful shows on TV, Restaurant Impossible and Dinner Impossible--funny names, in light of the scandal, no?

But resume falsification is hardly unique to the restaurant business.

Very interesting! I think Irvine has a restaurant on Hilton Head Island, but who knows if he is actually in the kitchen there or has lent/sold his name.

Just to think of the heights we might have achieved if we had been as creative with our resumes....does it count that I watched Julia Child on tv?? Not so dissimilar to taking an online class at one of those online schools, maybe (??)

Friends in North Carolina who mention the great dining scene in Winston Salem were skeptical when I shared my doubts of the connection between Bernardin's restaurant in that city and Le Bernardin in NYC. I finally wrote to LeB to inquire and they denied any connection with any other restaurant. Bernardin's in NC no longer mentions a connection on their website.