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The Four Seasons Is Closing, Less Than a Year After Reopening
The restaurant, which moved to a new location after losing its storied space in the Seagram Building, will close after lunch service on Tuesday.
Less than a year after the Four Seasons Restaurant opened in its new location on East 49th Street in Manhattan, it is shutting its doors. The restaurant once known for the power lunch will close after lunch service on Tuesday.
In an email statement, Alex von Bidder, the managing partner, said: “Regretfully, after nearly 60 years, the Four Seasons Restaurant will close the week of June 10th. 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.”
By phone, Mr. von Bidder added that he thought the new restaurant was great, looked great and had a great team in place. “But we just couldn’t make it; the restaurant world has changed,” he said.
He said that investors had made the decision to close. “We were not doing enough business to satisfy them,” he said.
Edgar Bronfman Jr., whose family had established the original Four Seasons and who had been closely involved with the business, said he thought it would be worth a try to keep the brand going when the restaurant lost its lease in the Seagram Building, in 2016, after the developer Aby Rosen took over. “We thought we had an outstanding place with great food, but we just couldn’t attract the clientele,” he said.
With a group of investors footing the $30 million price tag, Mr. von Bidder and his then-partner of many years, Julian Niccolini, opened a newly built version of the restaurant three blocks away from the original location last August.
In mid-December, Mr. Niccolini was removed from his position related to allegations of sexual misconduct. Asked whether the forced resignation of Mr. Niccolini might have had an effect, Mr. von Bidder said, “That’s hard to measure.”
When the restaurant first opened in 1959 in the Seagram Building, it was a game-changer in New York, if not the nation, for its design and food. The space, which was designated a local landmark in 1989, was the work of the architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. (Mr. Johnson had a regular table at lunch for decades.) Every element, including the bread bowls, was the product of an important American designer. Over the years, the space was adorned with works by artists like Pablo Picasso, James Rosenquist and Richard Lippold, who made the sculpture that hung over the bar in the Grill Room.
Under the stewardship of a series of restaurateurs and chefs, most notably Joe Baum, Tom Margittai, Paul Kovi, Seppi Renggli, Mr. Niccolini and Mr. von Bidder, the Four Seasons also set a high standard for American cuisine, which had previously lacked prestige. Long before anyone spoke of farm-to-table cooking, seasonal food drove the Four Seasons. (The concept is embedded in its very name.) Influential figures in the culinary world, including James Beard and Mimi Sheraton, helped shape the menu. The composer John Cage foraged mushrooms for the kitchen.
The fact that the famous power lunch was said to have been born at the Four Seasons only cemented the restaurant’s status.
The new version of the restaurant, which had a barroom and a dining room but no pool, had a young chef, Diego Garcia, in the kitchen and Bill Yosses, a former White House pastry chef, doing the desserts. Pete Wells, chief restaurant critic of The New York Times, reviewed the restaurant in early December, downgrading it from two stars to one.
Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks. More about Florence Fabricant
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