"The other week, chefs and longtime business partners Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr were sitting in a plush green banquette talking hockey - they are lifelong fans of the Rangers and the Canadiens, respectively - and steak dinners. They were mulling the menu for their next restaurant, Wild Cherry, seemingly in no rush to make any final decisions until absolutely necessary. "The menu will go down until Saturday, when we have a tasting," Hanson said."
"Cherry Lane has never been home to a restaurant (though some say it once housed a Prohibition-era speakeasy), but the bones are present. "We gravitate toward traditional places with history, places that feel very New York," Hanson says. The theater once hosted a production of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, adapted from Lorraine Hansberry's writings; premiered Samuel Beckett's Happy Days; and revived Sam Shepard's True West with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. Dylan Thomas read poems here, too."
Chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr are opening Wild Cherry, a 45-seat restaurant inside the restored Cherry Lane Theatre owned by A24. The chefs have decades-long partnerships and extensive experience revitalizing New York institutions such as Minetta Tavern and Le Veau d'Or. The theater has deep artistic history, including premieres and readings by notable figures. Wild Cherry occupies a former black-box space rebuilt to look established, featuring green banquettes, eye-catching light fixtures, a white-and-green checkered floor, and a cherry-leaf motif. Menu planning continued through tastings, with the restaurant scheduled to open next month alongside ongoing theater programming.
Read at Grub Street
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]