The legendary Four Seasons Restaurant is closing, Page Six has exclusively learned.
The institution — which moved to a new location in August 2018 — will serve its final soufflé on Tuesday, we’re told.
Sources say that its managing partner, Alex Von Bidder, called a staff meeting Friday to break the news, and a rep for the restaurant confirmed the closure to us.
In a statement to Page Six, Von Bidder said, “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.”
He added, “We thank our loyal guests for the opportunity and support over the years.”
Von Bidder — who ran the restaurant since the mid-Nineties with Julian Niccolini until Niccolini was ousted last year amid sexual misconduct allegations — also noted that the cost of running a restaurant in New York City has made it a challenge.
The restaurant opened in 1959 in the famed Seagram Building on Park Avenue and became a symbol of Manhattan’s wealth and power.
The term “power lunch” was coined by Esquire magazine in 1979 to describe midday meals there which end “with the decisions and the deals that will keep you in books, clothes, wine, and ideas for the rest of the year.”
It served as the unofficial lunch room for Condé Nast executives, and editors were said to be scolded for failing to be seated at the most desirable tables.
James Beard pioneered seasonal cooking there, but it was almost as notable for its art and design as it was for its contribution to cuisine.
The space was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Mark Rothko painted original art for its walls and a curtain designed by Pablo Picasso hung in its entryway.
Every president to serve since it opened, except Richard Nixon, dined there, and it had too many celebrity regulars to even begin to list them.
In 2015, the Seagram Building’s owner, Aby Rosen, declined to renew the restaurant’s lease, and the space was taken over by the buzzy Major Food Group, which has run The Pool, The Grill and the Lobster Club in the space since July 2017.
We’re told that the relocated Four Seasons, which reopened on 49th Street and Madison in September 2018, had struggled to attract the same numbers of expense account clientele that it had been famous for in the old location.