Media Path of Lease Resistance
by Laura Shunk and Jon Campbell
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay closed his Fifth Avenue restaurant Mesa Grill last year, laying to rest a landmark that, when it fired up its burners in 1991, was the only destination restaurant in an area dominated by garment factories.
In Februrary, Keith McNally shuttered Pastis, a Meatpacking District institution, amid rumors that the building it inhabited was slated for renovation. He initially maintained he would reopen there, but now says he will have to relocate.
Wylie Dufresne will close wd~50 before the year is out, removing an internationally famed bastion of molecular gastronomy from the Lower East Side block it helped colonize.
Read the full story in this week’s Village Voice.