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The Latest Victim
ByDonAu Bon Pain on 5th Avenue….dunzo.
Fourth New Chain on University
ByDonJust what we needed: another beverage outlet. Meet Argo Tea, a small chain of fancy tea shops, which will soon open a new branch in the old Dean and Deluca space on University Place. (You can sample it now at another outlet in the Flatiron Building.)

Dominique Ansel’s New Bakery Will Be Ultraluxe
ByDonNow baking at 64 University Place is Papa d’Amour, the new bakery from celebrated pastry master Dominique Ansel. It’s gonna be fancy. Here’s New York magazine’s take:
On a recent afternoon inside the kitchen that will open as Papa d’Amour later this month, the pastry chef Dominique Ansel was holding a spoonful of tomato-tinted scrambled eggs for the consideration of his wife, Amy Ma. “White pepper,” she said after trying it. “That’s not a bad thing.” She explained that Ansel will add vermicelli to the eggs to soak up any excess moisture so the mixture can then be stuffed inside a soft, steamed bao bun, which — because this is from the same chef who invented the Cronut all those years ago — will be folded in the shape of a croissant.
A single pastry that manages to reference a dim-sum staple, French patisserie, and the tomato-egg stir-fry that Ma’s mother cooked for her at home in Taiwan is but one of the many complex, globally collaged items on the menu of Papa d’Amour, which is Ansel’s “exploration” of Asian bread culture, as he puts it. More than that, it is a manifestation of love for his two children (the enfants to his papa) where customers will be able to find loaves of shokupan and sandwiches made on that Japanese milk bread (plain or laminated); pretzel-salt-crusted Chinese custard tarts; and a banana bread Malay cake derived not from the humble American home-baking staple but of Malaysia’s more elegant, fluffy, steamed sponge cake.
The Papa is particularly excited about a scallion-basil “blossom,” which, you’d never guess unless he told you, is his take on a Taiwanese scallion pancake. “I wanted something I can pull apart,” he says. He’d seen the way the pancake’s dough is fluffed by hand to give it a flaky, almost shredded surface and a chewy middle and wanted to come up with something that mimics that interplay. He was trained in France, so his mind went to two kinds of brioche: a regular version to encase the scallion component in the middle and a laminated, layered crown to encourage ripping.
Latest New School Construction Update
ByDonNext week (September 16 to September 20), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on the academic floors inside the building.
The following week (September 23 to September 27), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on academic floors. This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, September 14th for interior activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.
Good Heavens…Walmart?
ByDonThe latest gossip from The Villager:
While the fate of two prime-time storefronts on the south side of Union Square has yet to be determined, recent whispers have indicated that more big-box stores could be headed for the space currently occupied by a pair of retail behemoths.
Electronics retailer Circuit City, which filed for bankruptcy late last year, will shutter its location on 14th St. at Fourth Ave. at the end of next month as part of plan to auction off all its properties and leases nationwide.
A sales associate at the store said that Walmart was interested in the space, which is owned by developer The Related Companies, although a New York-based spokesperson for Walmart said the big-box chain currently has no announced projects in the city.
Best Buy, which has a store less than a mile away on W. 23rd St., is another name that has been floated as a future tenant. A company spokesperson said the electronics-and-entertainment retailer does not currently have any plans for the site and could not speculate on potential deals.
Rumors have also swirled for months over the possible departure of the adjacent Virgin Megastore, where Related — which owns a controlling interest of the Virgin stores — is also the landlord.
“We’ve made no decision about that property,” Related spokesperson Joanna Rose told Mixed Use, echoing her statements to this paper from last May regarding Virgin’s long-speculated exit. However, Rose did confirm that brokerage Winick Realty Group continues to handle the leasing assignment for the nearly 60,000-square-foot property.
A spokesperson for the Union Square Partnership did not have any information on who could open in either space, where brokers have pegged asking prices for the marquee addresses at upward of $300 to $350 per square foot.


