Latest news with #FiDi
Time Out
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Marcus Samuelsson's monthly series is celebrating up-and-coming BIPOC chefs
Summer is officially here, so you have little excuse not to get outside and experience New York's best in food and drink. But, as we all know, not all of the city's best cuisines can be confined to just four walls. Rather, some of the finest can be found right outside, popping up in wine bars, cooking under the Brooklyn Bridge and steadily parked on street corners. Heck, the buzz generated from these outdoor cook-offs has led to real-deal operations, from Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns's roving Vietnamese snack operation turned LES wine bar Ha's Snack Bar, to Jorge Aguilar's breakfast taco operation Border Town, which is heading to Greenpoint later this year. With all that said, we think it's best to become a loyal follower now so you can say 'you knew them when.' And while we don't mind crisscrossing the city to see what's up-and-coming, for those of you who'd like to save a little coin on the train, a FiDi steakhouse will be hosting several foodie pop-ups under its roof all summer. Even better? Superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson is hosting. This summer, Samuelsson and executive chef Sherry Cardoso of Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson are celebrating the season with their first-ever "Subway Series." Kicking off this month until July 23, the summertime pop-up series is giving BIPOC chefs without a physical restaurant space a chance to showcase their fare on a larger stage. Six chefs from around the way will be taking over the restaurant's outdoor terrace, introducing the likes of Sudanese sambuxas to octopus poke tacos inspired by the Philippines. View this post on Instagram A post shared by CmartysJerk (@cmartysjerk) Starting the series last week was Christopher Martin of Cmarty's Jerk. Remixing Caribbean flavors, he introduced house-smoked Jerk Chicken with a yam-plantain mash purée and Pan Seared Escovitch Snapper cooked in a red pepper purée with drops of scallion cilantro-oil. For dessert, chef Martin finished with a Ginger Snap Cereal S'more with a fire-toasted marshmallow. Next in the series, chef Shelly Flash of 2 Girls & A Cookshop will be taking over this Wednesday, June 25. A MasterChef, The Great Food Truck Race and Chopped alum, Chef Flash cooks alongside her daughter Jatuan, telling the story of the vibrant cookshops of Jamaica and street food across the diaspora. Using tacos as a vehicle, past iterations have included hot honey and fried chicken tacos and chopped cheese tacos. Meanwhile, on July 9th, a familiar face will be hosting the series: Christian Marcano, chef de cuisine of Metropolis. Selling empanadas during the pandemic, chef Marcano hopes to turn his bulk empanada operation, Empanada Eleven, into a food truck. With Filipino, Sudanese and Chino-Latino in the line-up, the only question is: which one are you going to visit first? Check out the full schedule of events below:
New York Post
22-05-2025
- Business
- New York Post
French department store Printemps brings surprisingly thrilling food to Wall Street
The loudest cheers on Wall Street aren't for the New York Stock Exchange's closing bell, but for the opening of the five most dynamic restaurants FiDi has ever seen under a single roof. They're at Printemps, the new Paris-based fashion store that's the glam showpiece of One Wall Street — the landmarked former Irving Trust office building recently converted to luxury condos. The neighborhood, once starved for quality cuisine, is now a lively residential district as well as a business hub. 7 Printemps opened in the Financial District in March, bringing French fashions —and five restaurants — to the neighborhood. Brian Zak/NY Post It's enjoying a dining renaissance with the revived Delmonico's on Beaver Street, SAGA and Crown Shy at 70 Pine Street and lively indoor-outdoor cafes on Stone Street. But it never had anything like Printemps' nexus of high style and kitchen magic, which are surprising and delighting food-lovers, scene-makers and night owls. Last Friday at 10 p.m. — two hours after the Printemps store closed — its flagship restaurant, Maison Passerelle, buzzed like a Wall Street Balthazar with couples dressed to kill. 7 The crisp-skinned ocean trout at Maison Passerelle is almost too pretty to eat. Tamara Beckwith The next afternoon, Salon Vert — a sexy, green-accented, second-floor raw bar/cafe — was so full, I had to wait for a seat at the bar. Was this really happening at Broadway and Wall Street, a corner where the favorite dish historically was a street-cart hot dog? Olivia Gracey, 31, a West Village publicist who's not involved with Printemps, was as surprised as me by Printemps culinary pleasures. 7 Gregory Gourdet, a finalist on seasons 12 and 17 of Bravo's 'Top Chef,' is overseeing all five restaurants at Printemps. Tamara Beckwith 'We stumbled into Salon Vert as a reprieve from prowling the sunglasses and bags. I'm now obsessed,' she told me. 'I'd drink the sweet potato soup with a straw if they'd let me.' Wealth advisor/consultant Marina Warner, 41, favors Cafe Jalu, a casual cafe next to Maison Passerelle. 'The people-watching is wild and hilarious. I didn't know so many fancy people were in FiDi with HUGE dogs,' she said, adding, 'The pain au chocolat is pretty insane when I need to eat my feelings in a good way.' 7 The beautiful Maison Passerelle has a vaguely tropical vibe. Tamara Beckwith All five eateries are run by Haitian-born chef Gregory Gourdet of Kent Hospitality Group — named for its beloved founder, the late chef James Kent. Rather than offer a predictable department-store lineup of familiar standards, Gourdet, a finalist on Bravo's 'Top Chef,' bravely intertwines French cuisine with flavors of the French diaspora — the former colonies from Canada to the West Indies to Vietnam. There's no political statement behind it; the dishes are just meant to taste wonderful, which almost all did. Maison Passerelle's 85 seats are the place to catch Gourdet's best work. The airy space designed by Laura Gonzalez (who did all the restaurants) has a vaguely tropical mood, with a marble mosaic floor, walnut walls, red jasper-topped tables, and plush, green-and-white fabric banquettes. 7 The standout dish is duck breast and confit glazed in cane syrup and bathed in tamarind jus. Tamara Beckwith Except for a misbegotten amuse bouche of mushroom broth with nuclear-hot Thai chilis that made three of us gag, just about everything was delicious. A starter of warm, richly herbed plantain bread and butter ($14) was sinfully filling. The best dish was heritage duck breast and confit glazed in cane syrup and bathed in tamarind jus — a powerful, West African-inspired interplay of game-y, sweet and sweet-and-sour flavors. I almost didn't mind the $72 price, as it could be enough to serve two. Spaghetti with Maine lobster ($60) arrived perfectly al dente. The tomato sauce was rich and plentiful, but the lobster was too chewy. I'd have gladly had half as much of the general shellfish portion if it were twice as tender. 7 Salon Vert, a raw bar and cafe, has been quite popular. Tamara Beckwith At Salon Verte, I enjoyed herbed, round focaccia with a crackling crust ($14) and shrimp Creole ($32) sparked with habanero, black pepper and horseradish. Then there's the Red Room Bar, an appendage of the landmarked Red Room on the building's Wall Street side. The magnificent space was once open only to BNY Mellon executives until the bank moved out in 2015. It now serves as the store's shoe department with Italian-made Manolo Blahniks going for $1,375. Sam Freeman, 33, an executive of Global Hotel Partnerships at American Express Travel & Lifestyle, likes the Red Bar's 'vibrant energy and unique ambiance, perfect for a meet-up or a drink after work and dinner.' 7 The light, fresh fare includes peekytoe crab remoulade. Tamara Beckwith He favors the Kafe Negroni ($21) spiked with Haitian coffee. For me, a crispy-crackling chicken sandwich ($24) on a potato bun heaped with pickled cabbage slaw and remoulade was all I needed to watch fashionistas smoothly descend a circular staircase to the ground floor with their pooches, huge and tiny, close at hand. The stock market's wobbly, but I'm bullish on Wall Street's new eats.
Business Journals
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Why LendingClub CEO Scott Sanborn is willing to bet big on downtown San Francisco
A financial-technology company asked its workers to return to their San Francisco office in 2021. The CEO says it has been so successful that the company is buying a new FiDi headquarters and committing to the city. Story Highlights LendingClub buys 88 Kearny St. for $74.5 million. Workers returned to the office in 2021, earlier than many other tech companies. CEO says after initial resistance, workers now consider in-office days their "favorite days of the week." As LendingClub moved closer to buying a San Francisco office building for its headquarters, its board of directors wanted to confirm the company was committed to downtown San Francisco, where it has been based since 2012. 'We said, 'Yes, absolutely,'' CEO Scott Sanborn told the Business Times in an interview April 18. LendingClub (NYSE: LC) had announced the prior day it entered into a definitive agreement to buy the 234,000-square-foot 88 Kearny St. site for $74.5 million, or $318 per square foot, confirming earlier Business Times reporting the fintech was narrowing in on the building. 'We have offices in Boston, New York and Salt Lake City,' Sanborn said. 'We've got great people everywhere. But this is definitely the headquarters, and will remain that.' With its existing lease for its 115,000-square-foot headquarters at 595 Market St. expiring in the spring of 2026, LendingClub began considering the future of its footprint in downtown San Francisco. Given the state of the city's commercial real estate market — building valuations are at their lowest levels in decades — the firm knew it had to at least crunch the numbers on buying a building instead of leasing space, Sanborn said. As it turned out, it found the cost of buying was less than leasing, and as a bank — a transition LendingClub made in 2021 — it could finance its own purchase without impact to its financial performance. LendingClub also wanted to remain rooted in San Francisco, Sanborn said. It moved to the city from the Peninsula in search of a broader talent pool, seeking to hire not just engineers but also professionals in the financial and marketing sectors. It has stayed for that talent – but also because of the vibrancy San Francisco brings to company culture, per Sanborn. A typical company outing might involve taking all 380 San Francisco-based employees to a game at Oracle Park. And these days it's hard to walk out of 595 Market in the evenings after in-office days and not run into a gaggle of staffers enjoying margaritas at Uno Dos Tacos, the Mexican restaurant on the building's ground floor, Sanborn said. The company began calling employees back to in-person work in 2021, earlier than many of its peers in the tech sector. 'At first there was some resistance, and then pretty universally, people said: 'Those are my favorite days of the week,'' Sanborn said. Today, employees are asked to work from the office Tuesday through Thursday, according to job postings on the company's LinkedIn page. But LendingClub's current space at 595 Market was not designed with a hybrid work model in mind; the plan at 88 Kearny is to make the building work for LendingClub's specific needs, including 'the ability to zoom from any room, and have the acoustics be right,' Sanborn said. He also views 88 Kearny as something of a brand opportunity. The 21-story building sits at the highly trafficked corner of Post and Kearny streets; it boasts a corner retail space occupied by a Citibank branch that Sanborn says provides an opportunity for street-level visibility for LendingClub branding. 'Similar to what you see in what we have here in this building,' Sanborn said of 595 Market, where LendingClub signage is set prominently above a Chase bank branch. 'Except when you know it's yours, and you plan to be there forever… we plan to make it a real branding moment.' LendingClub will occupy approximately 100,000 square feet in the building; the remaining 134,000 square feet is largely leased up to existing tenants, according to Sanborn, some of whom have renewed since LendingClub emerged as a buyer for the building. The fintech will make the move from 595 Market to its new headquarters at 88 Kearny in spring 2026.
Forbes
21-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The New Printemps Store In New York Is Fun
The shopping floor at the new Printemps store I was prepared not to like the new Printemps store in New York before I saw it. After all, how did these French retailers think they could just drop into New York, in the financial district no less, and turn sophisticated and jaded New Yorkers' heads? The U.S. is a tempting market, it's the largest consumer market in the world but it's also the graveyard of European brands and retailers who've come here to make their business grow. Shoes at the new Printemps store But after seeing the effort, attention, thought and creativity put into every inch of the store, it's hard not to like it. If you're a tourist in New York or you just like to shop, you'd miss out by not heading down to One Wall Street where the store recently opened. I've toured a lot of stores and I thought I'd be in the 54 thousand square foot shop for 15 minutes but I was there for over an hour. There's a lot to see. There are many discreet areas and each one has been thoughtfully decorated. There's a ton of vintage product that's unique and interesting (and expensive) but fun to see. And like their Paris store but on a smaller scale, the food offerings will keep you inside. There's a lot of interesting vintage product at the new Printemps store. It's fun and interesting and that's what shopping should be. It's worth seeing even if you weren't planning to be in FiDi. But if you're a tourist, there's now lots of things that will bring you nearby and sparing another hour to see the Printemps store is a good use of your time. More vintage at the new Printemps store Arianne Lapidus of Printemps said that since Barney's closed there's a gap in the market that Printemps is attemping to fill. While the new store will not remind you of Barney's, that's probably a good thing. I saw the financials of many of the small brands that were sold in Barney's and they were almost all unprofitable; what was a win for Barney's wasn't necessarily a good financial outcome for its vendors. And time has passed, we don't need to recreate Barney's, we need to see what comes next and Printemps is trying to be that new thing. For now, the crowds are literally lining up at the door. The crowd waiting to get in. All the entrances have lines, this one is at One Wall Street But about eventual success, there's no way to know right now. Here's what I wonder about: - Will the people who live, work and visit FiDi keep coming in or will it be one and done? - Will Printemps keep the products as fresh and interesting as they were at the store opening? Lapidus of Printemps made the point that Printemps owns all the inventory, there are no leased departments. What she was getting at is that they didn't let anything but good merchandising drive their product decisions and that's what retail should be. The beauty corridor in the Printemps store - Will they keep the layout? There's a champagne bar, a cocktail bar, a raw bar and a cafe. There's also a corridor on the upper level (pictured above) that you have to walk through to get from one end of the store to the other. Lapidus of Printemps says that half the bramds sold in the beauty area are not otherwise available in the U.S. The floor in the new Printemps store was copied from Versailles. Over time, the economics of retail can be demanding and pressure-filled. When vendors come along who will give you discounts and deals if you feature them prominently, it's tempting to boost the bottom line whether those are the right merchandising decisions or not. Whether Printemps succumbs to that, there's no way to know. It's a critical issue. Printemps is planning continued designer collaborations, events, integrated food and beverage and beauty services. If consumers think that a fun afternoon is spent wandering and eating at the Printemps store, then it's going to be a huge success. But if the cost and effort of having interesting and unique vintage becomes uneconomic, if the tourists or residents who spend aren't coming back, if the food is lackluster, if having sales begins to drive what's on offer, if making deals with big brands becomes important to the business, then the store can go on for a while but in the long run it won't make it. Lapidus says 'we're all looking for a little beauty and wonder' and this new store is where 'New York and Paris meet.' If Printemps can keep that approach and make it work, then perhaps a great French retailer can really make it in New York and the U.S.
