Ravi DeRossi, the restaurateur behind Death and Co, Avant Garden, Mother of Pearl and 12 other bars and restaurants around the city, is making a serious push to turn all of his operations fully animal-free. He’ll be starting by expanding the already vegan Avant Garden into multiple spinoff concepts, as well as closing the charcuterie-focused The Bourgeois Pig and reopening it as vegan wine and tapas bar LadyBird. All of his restaurants are in for some sort of shake-up, and it seems his mixologists won’t be safe either, as cocktail and beer lists will be purged of the often ignored animal ingredients that are sometimes used in drinks.
DeRossi himself has a long history with veganism, and feels passionately about the environmental and animal welfare impacts of factory farming. Before becoming involved in the hospitality industry, he spent many years living completely meat-free. As he describes to Eater, “You don’t realize that the average restaurateur does three times more destruction [to the environment] than the average person,” and, “If we’re going to do something to help this planet, it needs to start. It needs to be me not just preaching, but me just doing it. I’m in the position to do it.”
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The Nonprofit Open House New York states as their mission “promoting a greater appreciation of the city’s built environment; broadens public awareness by exposing diverse audiences to distinctive examples of architecture, engineering and design,” and what’s a more impressive feat of engineering and design than the city’s food system, which brings some of the greatest food in the world to millions every day?
Danny Meyer may have been the first to really make headlines by eliminating tipping, but Andrew Tarlow has now gone a step further by taking on the anti-tipping movement’s PR as well. Marlow recently pitched a standard sign which he believes all gratuity free restaurants should display in their windows in order to help retrain guests who have spent their whole lives living in a world of tips.
After a brief stint with a second location in Greenwich village last year which closed after six months, the 7 year-old Bark Hot Dogs will officially close up shop completely on February 7th. Bark was a Park Slope standby for many years, and owner Joshua Sharkey had previously talked about plans to open a different Manhattan location in a new neighborhood. That now seems unlikely, although Sharkey has been vague on the exact reasons for closure, stating only that (unlike the Greenwich Village location), rent was not the primary factor.
2016 is already shaping up to be the year of exciting food halls, with The Pennsy opening to fanfare and Brooklyn Navy Yard expected later this year. Now, we have another exciting announcement regarding the latter: the New York icon Russ & Daughters will be opening a location in the 60,000-square-foot Navy Yard space. The team says this location will be focused on fast casual breakfast and lunch, and they plan to increase bakery production with classic New York and Jewish baked goods like bialys, babka, challah and knishes.
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