Last week, as I walked from dinner at in the East Village to Penn Station (it was a VERY heavy dinner), I took a right onto Fifth Avenue at Union Square. It was sub-zero but I was determined to make it to my NJ Transit train without hypothermia. On the way, I passed a huge Eataly sign. At first, I thought I was hallucinating a walk through equally freezing Torino. But I was actually at Madison Square Park where, at 500 Fifth Avenue, the B&B Hospitality Group (that’s Batali & Bastianich) will expand their ridiculously huge Italian food and wine empire to include Eataly. The high end food salon is slated to open in Summer 2010. Now, I love me some Lidia, but I’m am predicting that Eataly will be the Italian Wine Merchants of food. That means a very well marketed, but overpriced and monopolistic business in town. I am more nostalgic than ever for the small Italian corner deli.
Categories: America, Food & Wine, New York City
6 Comments:
Leave a Reply:
Trackbacks & Pingbacks:
-
Pingback from Gordinhos, salivem! « Abrindoobico
July 29th, 2010 at 3:30 pm[...] A grande novidade culinária da cidade abre muito em breve, na West 23rd, pertinho da 5th Avenue: EATALY! [...]
Subscribe to this site's feed.
I love me some Lidia too, but it’s this kind of stuff that makes me happy I live in Hoboken where I can still go to Tony’s or Fiore’s and get the real-deal salumeria experience.
Now if we can just go back in time when Carlo’s bakery had lines of locals out the door and not fans of the “Cakeboss,” I’d be even happier.
January 6th, 2010 at 5:22 pmI’m still surprised that Tokyo got one before NYC. The one in Bologna is very beautiful and very well integrated into the traditional market district where it is located but it is definitely not the true Bolognese experience- they sell Kettle Chips, for christ sakes.
January 7th, 2010 at 11:26 amEataly New York will be twice the size of the Turin original.Right now it says Summer 2010 so as soon as we get a date I will let you know.It would be great to have a GTG here next summer!
January 16th, 2010 at 9:37 am_____________
Glass Of Venice
It is a shame, that good quality Italian Restaurant owners like Lidia – who has already 2 restaurants in NYC (one small and cozy and the other one huge) start going into “Mc Donald style” spreading themselves and loosing the respect of exclusivity some of us line up for – yeah they will make money – but they won’t have many of us who look for that flair, personality, exquisite service and attention only small and intimate places can provide.
July 16th, 2010 at 1:57 amLook at Cipriani in NYC, once a place where you would pant to get a seat, now it is the splatter all over town and in the news about tax evasion!!
Well the greed, the good old greed takes the better of the Italians in New York!!
I lived in Lingotto, Torino on Via Garessio, about a block away from Eataly in Torino. It was my absolute favorite place to go. Their prices were affordable and they had the best organic italian food available. So wonderful that this is coming to USA!
July 24th, 2010 at 6:02 pm