Tour the New Zero Irving Building

Soon to occupy the former Forbidden Planet space is Zumiez, a store with all the latest skateboard fashions.

Comfort food joint Chat ‘n Chew shut its doors this week after 22 years in the neighborhood, but the owner plans to reopen it as an Italian restaurant.

The diner-style eatery at 10 E. 16th St. near Fifth Avenue will relaunch in two weeks as Little Sal’s, said Ethan Silverman, son of owner Andrew Silverman.

“[Chat ‘n Chew] lost some of it’s energy, and now we’re getting it back,” Ethan Silverman said. “It’s going to be a Chat ‘n Chew on steroids. It’ll have traditional Italian food like chicken parm, eggplant parm and pastas.”

Silverman compared the concept of Little Sal’s to New York City restaurants like Sauce and Parm, where it’s “casual and family oriented — selling wine by the glass and not the bottle,” he said.

Andrew Silverman also co-owns Flatiron’s City Crab and Barbounia restaurants.

Little Sal’s will open as a pop-up in two weeks for a test run, and may remain open permanently depending on how well it does, Silverman said.

As for Chat ‘n Chew’s abrupt closure, Silverman said the team had known that they would be closing for a while, but hadn’t made it public.

“If people took a look at the place recently, they’d see that the staff was slowly kind of diminishing,” Silverman said.

“We’ve been in Union Square for a while, and we’re going to come back with energy,” he continued. “But [the concept] will be [in] keeping with the people who work and live in the neighborhood.”

…replacing Diesel at the corner of 14th and Union Square West

Earlier we reported that the decidedly low-midmarket Burlington Coat Factory, a leading national off-price retail chain, had announced it would open a new flagship store in the space formerly occupied by Filene’s on 14th St. Two months later, no sign of activity and no word when the store will actually arrive.

One of New York City’s top sushi chefs is back with her well-received omakase pop-up. Oona Tempest will revive Sushi by Bae next month — except this time it will be a permanent sushi counter in Union Square.

Sushi by Bae initially began as a sister pop-up to David Bouhadana’s proliferating Sushi by Bou back in 2017, and the idea is similar here. She’ll open a six-seat counter at 118 East 15th St., near Irving Place, on May 1, with a Sushi by Bou to open at the counter’s other six seats later in the month.

Sushi by Bae will follow a timed format, with a 90-minute, 15-course Edomae-style omakase, priced at $110. Diners can expect pieces of fish sourced from both Japan and the U.S. like a Japanese sea bream aged in kelp, cuttlefish, rosy seabass, and Hokkaido uni, though the menu will constantly evolve, Tempest says. Joshua Batista, who has worked with Sushi by Bae partner Simple Venue for a while, will lead the beverage program, which includes cocktails — an unusual element for omakase.

Tempest’s Sushi by Bae brand began as a pop-up inside Bouhadana’s Sushi by Bou within Meatpacking’s Gansevoort Market in 2017. Tempest, 26, was an apprentice of the late chef and respected NYC sushi master Toshio Oguma, working under him at acclaimed Upper East Side restaurant Tanoshi Sushi.

Though she’s most recently spent time at high-end, pricey sushi counters like Shoji at 69 Leonard Street and Sushi Ginza Onodera, she aims to keep things more casual at her own restaurant. She plans to follow Oguma’s philosophy in that it shouldn’t cost New Yorkers “an arm and a leg to have good sushi,” she says, one of the reasons she’s pricing the 15-course menu at $110 — to make it “more accessible.”

Sushi by Bae is located in the same space as sports bar Sidebar, though it has a separate entrance. It’ll be open from Tuesday to Saturday with three seatings per night, at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 9 p.m. Reservations are now open.

Here’s the update: 

Since Best Buy is constantly looking to build on its existing culture of innovation and tailor its stores to the needs of local customers, the electronic retail powerhouse figures, “Heck, why not open a 24-hour spot down there in New York City’s Union Square?” That’s right, Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn announced today that a 24-hour, 48,000 square-foot location (the old Circuit City) will open its doors at the corner of 14th Street and 4th Avenue, the heart of historic “please don’t run into me with your skateboard” Union Square, on Nov. 13. Dunn explained, “Today’s consumers have hectic lifestyles that don’t always conform to traditional retail hours. New York has long been known as the city that never sleeps.” Ye —people are lying awake at night, wishing they had a Golden Girls DVD or an Epson scanner! (Sorry, Virgin Megastore.) Maybe people really are looking to shop after 10 p.m.—the 24-hour 5th Avenue Apple Store is doing well. And there’s always the possibility of making a night of it with a bite to eat at the soon-to-come TGI Friday’s. The new location will be open each week from 8 a.m. on Monday through 12 a.m. on Sunday, re-opening for regular Sunday hours of 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.