Three new places to eat and drink moved a step closer to opening on the Upper West Side this week, after a Community Board 7 committee gave all of them its unanimous blessing in a single evening — a brewery, a fine-dining restaurant moving into one of the neighborhood’s most legendary rooms, and a French steakhouse with outposts in four cities. Here’s what’s coming, and where.
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At its June 10 meeting, the board’s Business & Consumer Issues Committee signed off on liquor-license applications for all three, each of them currently building out space and eyeing an October opening.First up was Talea Beer Co., which has signed a lease at 441 Amsterdam Avenue, on the corner of West 81st Street at the space which previously housed St. James Gate. Co-founder Tara Hankinson presented the application herself, and told the committee that Talea — which she and co-founder LeAnn Darland operate as the only woman-owned brewery in New York City — has been hunting for an Upper West Side location for years, in part because it was the first neighborhood Darland lived in when she moved to the city. The company brews all its beer at its flagship Williamsburg taproom, which opened in 2021, and runs a handful of satellite tap rooms across the city, each serving Talea’s beer, wine, spirits and food. As a farm brewery, it uses a proportion of New York State ingredients.
The Amsterdam location is seeking a full liquor license. Hankinson described it as more of a daytime and happy-hour spot, with a coffee program, free Wi-Fi, food, and a stroller-friendly room where customers are welcome to bring laptops and work. She proposed hours of 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. The team plans to add an ADA-accessible bathroom on the ground floor in addition to two in the basement, and is maintaining the building’s landmarked facade. Outdoor seating would be limited to four or five small sidewalk tables on West 81st Street — not on Amsterdam, and no roadway seating — with the outside closing at 10 p.m. each night. Asked about a karaoke component that had circulated among neighbors, Hankinson said it was a mistake on the application; there are no karaoke plans. She anticipates opening by October 1.
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Next was Air Cafe LLC at 1 West 67th Street, the storied space that housed The Leopard at des Artistes for 15 years and, before that, the legendary Café des Artistes. Managing partner Max Katzenberg presented; his partner, Ariel, was traveling in Greece. Katzenberg said the pair are experienced operators currently running three restaurants in Lower Manhattan — Tokyo Record Bar, Roscioli and Pearl Box — and that he previously ran Olmsted and Maison Yaki in Brooklyn — both, he noted, deeply neighborhood-oriented, as he understands the Upper West Side to be. The plan is a French-American-inspired, à la carte fine-dining restaurant that follows much the same rhythm as its predecessor: lunch seven days a week starting at noon, no breakfast and no late-night service, a last seating at 10:30 p.m., and all guests out by midnight. The application also requests four roadway tables and three sidewalk tables for seven seats outside, weather and season permitting.Katzenberg, who said he was born in the Alden on 82nd Street and Central Park West and whose father was a Broadway musician, told the committee the renovation will be purely cosmetic. The building’s famed murals, painted by Howard Chandler Christy, are staying untouched — and he said he’d love to track down earlier murals removed from the space decades ago and return them. Committee members raised the issue of the ongoing construction surrounding 67th Street tied to the ABC redevelopment, and offered to connect Katzenberg with the community advisory board coordinating neighborhood efforts around that work. Because the restaurant will operate primarily in the evenings, he said, he’s optimistic it can work around the heaviest of the construction noise.
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The committee’s last item was Boucherie at 444–446 Columbus Avenue, presented by Donald Bernstein with the company’s CEO, Jasmin Polimac, on hand to field operational questions. It would be the fifth Boucherie in Manhattan, joining outposts in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Bernstein described it as a high-end, French sit-down restaurant; the CEO called it a French brasserie and steakhouse, and said the landlord steered the group toward a French concept for the block over its original idea of an Italian spot. The restaurant is taking over the former Milling Room and Starbucks storefronts and combining the two into a single, larger room with 222 seats at tables and roughly 25 at the bar. Hours run until midnight nightly — “truly a restaurant,” Bernstein said, “not a bar.”The Columbus Avenue space carries one of the Upper West Side’s rare interior landmark designations, and Bernstein confirmed the glass ceiling, mural and wrought iron will all remain. He walked the committee through the room’s long history — the Palm Room of the Endicott Hotel back in 1890, later Main Street, then Calle Ocho, Corvo Bianco and, for about its last dozen years, the Milling Room. Outdoor seating isn’t part of this application; the group plans to return for that once it secures its health department permit. Polimac said the restaurant is targeting an opening by the first of October.
All three applications passed the committee unanimously. Each still needs to be ratified by the full board, which the committee expects to take up at a full board meeting later in June, before the board’s summer break, at which point the approvals can be forwarded to the State Liquor Authority.
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