After finding considerable success with a retro burgers-and-shakes concept, celebrated restaurateur Danny Meyer is about to try a modern-day riff on the classic New York coffee shop.
His Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG)announced yesterday that it will open a breakfast-and-lunch inside New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art next month. True to the art setting, it’ll be called “Untitled,” and will be open to the general public.
Dinner will only be served on Saturday and Sunday nights, the city’s prime museum-hopping days, and the menu will be a chef’s pick for the whole table of what’s fresh and seasonal. The set menu will change each night.
Breakfast will be offered all day.
Meyer said the venture was inspired by the coffee shops that once lined Madison Ave., where the museum is located. The places operated under such names as Young’s and Whitney’s and largely disappeared during the 1960s and ‘70s. Untitled’s weekday menu will feature modern updates of those places’ specialties and will change daily. Sample bills of fare have yet to be released.
The executive chef will be Chris Bradley, the former executive sous chef of Gramercy Tavern.
Museum locales are no stranger to USHG, who also has eateries in both the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. In May of 2009, the Whitney selected USHG to conceive, create and operate the new cafe. It also named the restaurant group’s Union Square Events as the in-house caterer.
USHG, with Rockwell Group, is repurposing the former Sarabeth’s space situated on the garden level of the Marcel Breuer-designed museum.
The restaurant group operates several of New York’s highest-rated restaurants, including Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern. Its holdings also include Shake Shack, a chain of 1950s-style burger-and-shake outlets.
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