Owner of D’Or, Opening Tonight, Also Plotting Rooftops to Rival 230 Fifth -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

Basement feeling a little stuffy? Don't worry, a rooftop's coming.Photo: Courtesy of D'Or

Tonight’s launch of D’Or (pictured above), the lounge underneath the Dream Hotel’s newly opened Amalia, isn’t the most exciting thing owner Greg Brier has going. He tells us that on July 1 he’ll open a 4,000 sq. ft. rooftop on the 16th floor of the Hilton Gardens hotel on 48th Street and Eighth Avenue — a space he believes will trump 230 Fifth in size. A two-minute walk through a utility corridor and a high-speed elevator trip will lead visitors to an enclosed fifteenth-floor lounge with a glass fireplace. And the roof? “It’s going to have a Japanese garden-type feel,” Brier says, “with teak decking and little plots so people can break away from the crowd.” More than likely, he’ll ask Amalia chef Ivy Stark to consult on a menu of “real American barbecue.”

Brier and Dream owner Vikram Chatwal are also transforming a former midtown Quality Inn into a 250-room boutique hotel with restaurant, rooftop bar, and downstairs lounge. Like the other undertaking, it still doesn’t have a name. And while it’s too far ahead of the projected Labor Day opening for other details, Grier tells us, “I’m going to take some of that old New York feeling and update it. High-design modernism has been done to death.” Take that, Ian Schrager. —Daniel Maurer