Why Rockefeller Center Is the Most Exciting Place to Eat in New York City

Real estate developer Tishman Speyer reinvigorated a New York City icon by building a new community of chefs.

Last December, while eating pasta in brodo at Jupiter in Rockefeller Center, EB Kelly glanced up to see Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr from the neighboring French brasserie grab seats at the bar. The chef duo has a hit restaurant on their hands with Le Rock, and that night, they sat enjoying post-shift drinks and communing with the Jupiter team. For most, the scene would be insignificant. For Kelly, the head of Rockefeller Center and senior managing director of developer Tishman Speyer, it was like witnessing the Big Bang.

“In that moment, I saw that we were delivering on the proposition of building a community of people who were committed not only to their own success but also to supporting one another, and building off one another, riffing off one another,” says Kelly. “It’s like we created a college campus for the best chefs in New York.”

READ MORE: 15 Game Changers Who Are Impacting the Way We Eat and Drink in 2023

If you haven’t heard, a previously inconceivable concentration of chef talent now occupies Rockefeller Center. In addition to Hanson and Nasr, Clare de Boer, Jess Shadbolt (both 2018 F&W Best New Chefs), and Annie Shi run Jupiter. Then there’s Greg Baxtrom (Five Acres); Ignacio Mattos (Lodi); Walker Stern (Le Rock), a 2014 F&W Best New Chef; and Junghyun Park (Naro), a 2019 F&W Best New Chef. JJ Johnson’s Harlem rice bowl concept, Fieldtrip, replaced generic Tri Tip Grill, and Eli and Max Sussman’s Samesa took the place of Mediterranean Nanoosh.

This dining revolution started with hard truths. In 2018, the glass-and-steel luxury mall Hudson Yards, with its mega-chef lineup, was gunning for real-estate supremacy. Google had just purchased Chelsea Market for a record $2.4 billion. But Rock Center, one of the city’s Art Deco jewels, had lost relevance with its hometown crowd.

Kelly, who previously managed development of the High Line and Whitney Museum and worked on redeveloping the World Trade Center, knew food had to be an anchor of any reboot. The thinking went: If New Yorkers aren’t eating here, neither will tourists.

So Tishman Speyer gave the building’s rink level a destination-dining-worthy renovation and set about pulling together an ecosystem of New York chefs who were excited about neighborhood-building and were down for the unknown of reimagining an iconic building in the wake of an industry-crushing global pandemic.

Then, according to Hanson and Nasr, the developer embraced their visions, never asking the chefs to compromise their style for the neighborhood. “From the minute we walked into our space, we knew what we wanted to do, and Tishman Speyer was very supportive of that idea,” says Hanson. Concurrently, the developer installed a rooftop garden above Radio City Music Hall.

In New York, and especially post-COVID midtown Manhattan, much about the future of restaurants and real estate remains an open question, but in reimagining Rockefeller Center, Tishman Speyer tapped into one of the city’s strongest creative assets: its chefs. And the elite group it has attracted is boldly affirming the building’s future—with dressed Dungeness crab, tuna bibimbap, and chicken liver tajarin—and where they decide to drink after work.

“People still can’t believe this is happening,” Kelly says. “‘Am I really having a great meal at Rockefeller Center?’”

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