Chelsea to Get New Danny Meyer Bar

Porchlight, the new Danny Meyer bar, will open in Chelsea this month. Photo: Ellen Silverman.

Chelsea gallery-goers, rejoice: there’s about to be a new post-opening hot spot. Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer is opening a new bar, Porchlight, at 28th Street and 11th Avenue in Manhattan.

While Porchlight doesn’t have any gallery connection, it is liable to draw lots of visitors from among those making the gallery rounds. The watering hole will add to a somewhat limited food and drink scene in the neighborhood—as the New York Observer once pointed out, “How many times can you go to Bottino and Hotel Americano in the span of a few weeks?”

“Most people hang out on their porch as a way to watch the world go by,” said Meyer, explaining the bar’s name to the New York Times. “A place for ‘being,’ as opposed to ‘doing.’ Nobody does stuff on a porch.”

Meyer had long been resistant to opening a cocktail bar, but changed his mind, he said, because he felt it is the type of establishment “that could use a little hospitality.” Most chefs who branch out to the bar business do so under the auspices of a hotel or existing restaurant, but the Porchlight bar is a standalone project.

The drink menu, courtesy of head bartender Nicholas Bennett, a Booker and Dax alumni, will offer updated takes on classic cocktails, with several Southern favorites such as the sazerac, the hurricane, and whiskey and cola, the latter eschewing Coke for a house-made cola syrup and fernet. Porchlight will also serve small plates from chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois. No word on price point, but presumably it will be more affordable than the art world’s other new restaurant, Larry Gagosian’s reviled Kappo Masa (see Larry Gagosian’s New Sushi Joint Slammed With Zero Stars in Times Review).

Porchlight is slated to open mid-February.

 

 


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