Fancy Wine Bar to Fill Vacant 13th St. Space

13th St.’s historical Erskine Press building will be the home to some kind of new restaurant called Chard pretty soon. No details, but it seems Asian.

Next week (October 10 to October 14), contractors will continue to excavate earth and load out material. Concrete foundation walls at the South East corner of the site and slab on grade work will continue. Underground electrical and plumbing work will continue. DOT approved street connections to underground utilities on Fifth Avenue will progress. Formwork and rebar for superstructure will continue at cellar levels.

The following week (October 17 to October 21 ), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs, street utility connections and underground electrical and plumbing.

When the New School builds its new building on the corner, one of its major uses will be to house a consolidated Parsons School of Fashion Design, which is currently scattered among many midtown buildings. That’s according to the New School student newspaper. So expect even more groovily dressed teens outside our front doors.

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.”

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.

The annual meeting of shareholders took place on July 22. Two days later we distributed the minutes and the Powerpoint presentation via e-mail to everyone whose address we have. If you did not get this material and would like to see it, please contact donwillmott@hotmail.com.