Spiderbands didn’t last, but 305 Fitness, another (better-funded) fitness chain is taking up residence on the ground floor of 14th St. Here’s hoping they keep the volume down.
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.”
Huge news as The New York Times reports on plans to pedestrianize the block of Broadway above Union Square as well as 17th St. in front of Barnes and Noble. Opinions are divided on this one. What do you think?
Here’s one problem we haven’t had in our bulding (yet): a bee swarm. Bee experts had to be called in last week to collect a swarm of bees at 4th Ave. and 14th. St. Weird.
Metro Drugs on West 14th St., the neighboorhood’s best source of cheap cleaning supplies, has closed. Oh, well!
Please note that the annual shareholders’ will be happening this year on July 22.