Month: June 2017

The supreme fiction of the old Four Seasons restaurant was that it would last forever—that this vessel of modernism, encased in walnut and Carrara marble, would sail into the mists of time and emerge unchanged in hundreds of years, businessmen still grinning behind brazenly pink skyscrapers of cotton candy. But a few years ago the […]

A restaurant called “the Four Seasons” will open a few blocks south of its original Seagram Building home later in 2017. But this season belongs to THE GRILL — the first of two distinct new eateries to bow in the landmarked dining rooms inside the also-landmarked Seagram tower at 375 Park Ave.

Major Food Group’s revamp of the former Four Seasons space is getting truly real — as of right this moment, THE GRILL is accepting reservation requests.

The midcentury American restaurant will be the first of three restaurants to open in the Seagram building, with a debut slated for the first week of May. People interested in nailing down their spot to experience what will likely be the year’s most scrutinized restaurant opening can email reservations@thegrillnewyork.com. It will only be open for dinner initially, meaning plans for the next big power lunch must wait

Venison Cumberland. Spring Chicken à la Queen. Lobster à la Newberg. Filet mignon Florentine. Avocado crab Louis. Must be some recipes from an old Charles Ranhofer cookbook. Or maybe it’s an early edition of The Joy of Cooking. No, wait, it’s the new menu from THE GRILL, Major Food Group’s mid-century-American-chophouse remake of THE GRILL Room, and phase one of its $30 million Seagram Building project. So is the burgeoning restaurant powerhouse, formerly known as the Torrisi Boys, up to the challenge of reinventing the clubbiest clubhouse of all?

THE GRILL—formerly the Four Seasons—is looking to change the culinary landscape of midtown Manhattan.

“We’re bringing power back to midtown,” says Mario Carbone, the 37-year-old co-founder of Major Food Group. He is sitting at the bar of THE GRILL, the restaurant that will take over the space of the former Grill Room at the Four Seasons in midtown Manhattan, and at the moment, he is surrounded by menus from revered, mostly long-gone New York establishments such as Jack Dempsey’s, the 21 Club, Toots Shor’s, and the Oak Room.

A bastion of ritualized, old-guard dining in New York City is about to be taken over by three brash young men who were born decades after it opened.

The space that houses the Four Seasons, a restaurant on East 52nd Street that has symbolized Manhattan power and elegance for more than half a century, is set next year to become a stage for the creative cooking and stylized showmanship of the men behind scene-making downtown restaurants like Carbone, Santina and Dirty French.

In a test kitchen in NoLIta, the windows obscured with paper, a group of men sat at a cluttered table, carving steaks and wrangling over the future of one of New York’s most famous dining spaces.

“I like the ’60s vibe of the green olive cross-section,” one man said, chewing a bit of goose and duck terrine filled with foie gras. “But is it too much pork fat?” another asked.

At least once a week for over a year, the partners in Major Food Group have met to tinker with the food they will serve at their next project, the Landmark Rooms at the Seagram Building — formerly known as the Four Seasons.

The guys behind Carbone want to turn the place that invented the power lunch into an actual food destination.

A few weeks ago, in an empty dining room of what used to be The Four Seasons restaurant, Jeff Zalaznick arrived late to a meeting with his business partners, the chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi. He was winded and his cheeks flushed beneath his beard. Normally, his attire consists of open-collared shirts, limited-edition Nikes, and drawstring pants. But today, he wore a blue Tom Ford suit.

Since Major Food Group took over the former Four Seasons space in Midtown, there has been much hand-wringing over what will become of THE GRILL Room and Pool Room, which have landmark status, but very little over the fate of the square bar that greeted patrons as they climbed the stairs to the restaurant.

Preservationists and students of New York drinking culture will be relieved to know that the rosewood bar — designed, like the rest of the restaurant, by Philip Johnson — will probably be the least altered part of the space.

Forget the famous power lunch. For the time being, forget about any lunch at all in the rooms that used to house the Four Seasons.

When THE GRILL, the first of two new restaurants in the Seagram Building space, opens to the public on May 2, it will serve only dinner. Jeff Zalaznick, a partner in Major Food Group, which now runs the restaurant complex, said the group wants the restaurant to make its mark as a destination for dinner. (Lunch will be added in about two months.)