Schrager Goes ‘Yau!’
China Syndrome Hitting downtown dining.
After nearly a year of planning, John McDonald is not checking into Ian Schrager’s revamped Gramercy Park Hotel after all. “The design was nearly done and the menu was practically developed,’’ says McDonald, proprietor of Lever House and MercBar, of the restaurant he thought he was opening in the condo-ized Gramercy. “It would have been a great American bistro. But at some point, the deal became untenable.” The mercurial Schrager’s eye has wandered instead to Alan Yau, owner of London’s Hakkasan, the only Chinese restaurant ever to get a Michelin star. “I’m still talking to John, and he and I are great friends,’’ says Schrager. “But this is a real coup. You can’t get in to any of Alan Yau’s restaurants in London, and everyone in this country has been trying to bring him here” (including André Balazs and Drew Nieporent). Complicatedly, McDonald’s partner in the bistro (and Lever House) was Aby Rosen, who co-owns the Gramercy with Schrager; McDonald and Rosen are also opening a similar place called Chinatown, in the former Lafayette Street Time Cafe space.
—Beth Landman