Mario Carbone goes back to ’50s New York at latest restaurant, the Grill in midtown Manhattan
Back in the day, people like Jack Dempsey they made it all about the show; that’s the way it’s going to be here, says Carbone, whose newest venture will evoke the service style and dishes of the 1940s and ’50s
Mario Carbone says he is “bringing power back to midtown”. The 37-year-old co-founder of Major Food Group is sitting at the bar of the Grill, the restaurant that will take over the space of the former Grill Room at the Four Seasons in midtown Manhattan. He is surrounded by menus from revered, mostly long-gone New York establishments such as Jack Dempsey’s, the 21 Club, Toots Shor and the Oak Room.
These menus are inspiration for the decidedly American food he’ll serve at the Grill. Carbone treats the old, worn menus like sacred texts, reciting such dish names as fried scallops in tartar sauce, or roast prime rib of beef with baked potato. “I’m going to serve that,” he says, softly.
For Carbone and partners Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick, the past has been a key component of their winning restaurant formula, particularly at their power dining room, Carbone. There, the trio transformed the cliché of an Italian-American red-and-white tablecloth dining room into high style, with Zac Posen-clad waiters, walls of Julian Schnabel art, and fancy Caesar salads tossed at the table.
Carbone also has a self-named restaurant on Wyndham Street in Hong Kong, which opened in 2014.
At the Grill, which will open on May 4, Carbone is evoking the 1940s and ’50s, when elevated American food was first coming into its own, and a restaurant in midtown didn’t have to have a Le or La in front of its name to be fashionable. Torrisi will be the chef in charge of the more modern, tropically minded the Pool, opening in July. A third restaurant downstairs, yet to be named, is being designed by architect Peter Marino as a late night destination and is slated to open in the autumn.