The Four Seasons Restaurant Is Closing, Less Than a Year After Moving to a New Location
The Four Seasons Restaurant is closing-less than one year after reopening in a new location. After a nearly 60-year run, the restaurant will shut its doors after lunch on Tuesday.
Alex von Bidder, the Four Seasons's managing partner, told Town & Country that the high cost of running the restaurant continued to be a challenge despite his team's best efforts.
"We have been privileged to work with one of the finest culinary teams and outstanding staff that has stayed with us through some challenging times over the course of our history," von Bidder said through a spokesperson. "We thank our loyal guests for the opportunity and support over the years."
Esquire coined the term "power lunch" in a 1979 article about the original location of the restaurant, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson and opened in Manhattan's Seagram Building in 1959.
In 2015, developer Aby Rosen declined to renew the restaurant's lease, and von Bidder and his then-business partner Julian Niccolini held set about finding a new space. They held an auction of furniture and memorabilia from the restaurant that brought in $4.1 million the following year, but it took another two years before they were ready to reopen in a space on East 52nd Street that underwent a $40 million renovation, von Bidder told the Wall Street Journal.
Niccolini and the restaurant parted ways last December following allegations of sexual misconduct, and when asked by the New York Times how much Niccolini's actions and the ensuing controversy may have affected business, von Bidder said, "That's hard to measure."
Perhaps the closure is simply a sign of the times; many of today's rising power brokers may be happier making a deal over a Sweetgreen salad than a lunch whose least expensive entree option is a $36 tuna burger.
No matter what, it's a sad final note for one of the most famous places to eat in America.
(The New York Times and New York Post first reported the news of the closure.)
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