Pasta restaurants and women-owned and run businesses are the themes this month. Bleecker Street continues to see lots of activity.
Open
Top Openings
Silver Spoon NY
204 West 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues
A new concept in take-out has opened in the old Dirty Bird space. The owner, Gulzira Jumabekova, was in the hospitality business in New York but moved to Scottsdale, Arizona for a year, where she ran a similar spot before returning to open Silver Spoon. The talented chef, Floyd Chattman had been with the restaurant group City Nights Hospitality at 48 Lounge, a cocktail lounge and event venue in midtown before he joined the Silver Spoon team. He is from California, but his family has roots in the south, and that is reflected in some of the dishes, like cheese grits, biscuits and sausage gravy, and fried chicken. The eclectic food options are displayed on steam tables, and the menu changes from breakfast to lunch to dinner. All the food is made from scratch and is of very high quality. No plastic packaging is used, and the soda (Boylan’s) comes in glass bottles. To read more about the food, see Hannah Reimann’s review on page 19.
Ovenly
523 Hudson Street between Charles and West 10th Streets
This is the fifth location of the bakery chainlet, and its first Manhattan location. The bakery plays with sweet and salty combinations, such as the Salted Chocolate Chip which I tried and liked, but found not quite as good as the ones at Chip (I later found out it is a vegan cookie which could be the problem). The website describes the business as follows: “Founded and led by women. Focused on the future. And There’s Cake!” The bakery is known for its Brooklyn Blackout Cake, and I will definitely return to try the pistachio cardamom loaf. The Ovenly Cookbook is available for purchase at the shop.
La Devozione Chelsea Market 9th Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets
The newest restaurant to open at Chelsea Market is La Devozione which is owned by Pastificio Di Martino, a century-old pasta maker from Gragnano Italy. Over a hundred dried pasta shapes are available in the shop, along with advice on which to use for a particular recipe. Hand-made whimsical pottery is also available for purchase. A casual dining area called “La Tavola” features traditional pasta dishes, while the more experimental “The Oval” pasta bar offers multi-course pasta tasting menus with innovative preparations. There is also a take-out counter for those who prefer their pastas to go. This is the first outpost of Pastificio Di Martino outside of Italy.
Also Open
Maestro Pasta (102 MacDougal Street near Bleecker Street) is the restaurant’s second location (the first opened in FiDi in 2018). The menu allows you to mix and match pasta shapes and sauces, as well as other fillings and toppings. This restaurant has roots in Parma, in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. The founder, Alessandro Morani, has worked with a team to build a patented pasta machine, producing traditional pasta in a non-traditional way. In November we reported that the beloved Tomoe Sushi had closed. The owners posted a note, saying, among other things: “Tomoe Sushi on 172 Thompson Street in NYC served many loyal customers from across the world for 39 years and is closed for good. it will NOT be passed onto anyone else.” While the old owners may not have sanctioned a reboot, ToMo21 Sushi (172 Thompson Street between Bleecker and West Houston Streets) is now open at that location with different owners but the same chef. The menu is also pretty much the same, and for now it is BYOB. Like many other businesses on Bleecker Street, Ring Concierge (400 Bleecker Street near West 11th Street) has chosen to open its first brick and mortar location here. The business was started in 2013 as an online bespoke wedding ring store, but now they feature two more affordable jewelry lines as well. They are committed to designing jewelry for women, by women. Player’s Café (241 Bleecker Street between Leroy and Carmine Streets) is a convenience store run by lotto.com which hopes to “de-stigmatize the lottery experience and educate a digitally savvy generation on the philanthropic causes that state lotteries support.” The shop sells lottery tickets, coffee, prepacked food and gifts.
Closed
Kim’s Vogue Nails (491 6th Avenue between 12th and 13th Street) is no longer in business.
Temporarily Closed
Lesbian bar The Cubbyhole (West 12th Street) closed on 1/11 for 4-8 weeks for “some much needed renovations.” Goorin Bros. (337 Bleecker Street) hat shop has a sign on the door that says: “This Location is temporarily closed until further notice, apologies.”
Coming Soon
FYS Gourmet Inc. (Feed Your Soul), a gourmet supermarket, will open in the old Gourmet Garage space (117 7th Avenue South). Gourmet Garage closed in 2018 (but will be returning to the Village in the next few months in the old Mrs. Green’s space on Hudson Street). Medrite Urgent Care is coming to 403 Sixth Avenue near Greenwich Avenue. The space was most recently a T-Mobile store. Madman Espresso & Bakery has signage up at 332 Bleecker Street (between Christopher and West 10th Streets). Madman Espresso has been on University Place near East 10th Street for many years, and recently a stand-alone Madman Bakery opened a few doors down.
Moved/Other
Karma Nepal Crafts (266A Bleecker Street between Morton and Leroy Streets), a store which sells a variety of items such as clothing, jewelry, crystals and more by women artists from Nepal, Thailand, and India, has moved from 34 Carmine Street to Bleecker Street. Sadly, there were three break-ins at local restaurants in December and January: The Bus Stop Café and Móle, both on Hudson Street, had cash stolen from their registers, and The Mary Lane on Greenwich Street had a number of iPads and laptops stolen. Poulet Sans Tete, the chicken take-out spot operating out of Left Bank was cited in New York Magazine for their Health Salad, which the food critics found to be their new favorite. If you’ve enjoyed it and want to try making it at home, you can find the recipe, provided by Laurence Edelman, in the article. And finally, some sad news: if you were looking forward to having some $0.25 Martinis at Anton’s, that won’t be possible. Anton’s was planning to offer this option at lunch, but according to a post on their Instagram account, an obscure NY State liquor law specifies that “special prices on liquor/wine cannot be offered any lower than 50% of an establishment’s regular pricing,” so now the martinis will be priced at $9.00. But they are not going down without a fight. The post continues: “Wish us luck as we battle through a pending SLA case…just when we thought all the bureaucratic hurdles were behind us…”
There is so much activity that it’s hard to keep up. Please let us know if you see anything. We’d love to hear from you at wvnewsinout@gmail.com
