Lure’s yacht-like eating room.
Picture: Courtesy of Lure
Throughout the frenzied world of mid-aughts digital media, an business centered for probably the most half in a couple of blocks of Soho, there might as nicely have been solely two eating places: Balthazar, for breakfasts, and Lure, for lunch. At Keith McNally’s brasserie, one rubbed shoulders with vacationers and youngsters over omelettes and fruit plates. Lure, alternatively, situated under floor stage on the nook of Prince and Mercer Streets, was inhabited practically solely by titans of the two.0 period. They ate shrimp cocktail and Americanized sushi, and they’re one purpose why when, simply earlier than the New Yr, information arrived that there’s a superb probability Lure will quickly be pushed out by Prada — which shares the constructing and is reportedly curious about creating an even bigger footprint for its retailer — a light panic ensued among the many restaurant’s previous and current regulars.
Designed by Serge Becker and opened in 2004 by John McDonald, Lure is a subterranean wood-lined cabin modeled after mid-century yachts. It was Michael’s for the Gawker age, and on any given day one would reliably be capable of discover the deputies and lieutenants from that firm, which on the time included the flagship in addition to websites like Gizmodo and Deadspin, sitting of their typical cubicles. They weren’t alone. Dennis Crowley of Sq., Faculty Humor’s Ricky Van Veen, David Karp of Tumblr, and Ken Lerer of the Huffington Publish and his Thrillist-founder son, Ben Lerer, all held court docket in full view of one another. It was at Lure that Ben Leventhal, the co-founder of Eater (together with ex-Gawker-er Lockhart Steele), honed a “professional tip” by ordering an off-menu hen sandwich.
The meals — at first below the care of chef Josh Capon, later dealt with by Preston Clark (whose late father, Patrick, was as soon as chef at, amongst different spots, the Odeon) — was by no means the purpose, in fact. (“Lure provides an excessive amount of too weirdly and too typically,” then–New York Occasions critic Frank Bruni wrote early within the restaurant’s life.) The enchantment, to some extent, was that the room resembled the longer term most of the digital-media world’s would-be blogger barons imagined for themselves: aboard a ship, consuming hamachi.
20 years later, Gawker’s gone. Faculty Humor folded. Tumblr has tumbled. One brilliant spot is Vox, the dad or mum firm of Grub Avenue in addition to New York Journal. Vox, in fact, owns Eater, too: CEO Jim Bankoff made the deal to purchase it over lunch at Lure.
For now, Lure endures with its teak and tuna. There was not less than one lease scare earlier than, in 2013, that it survived. But if the present rumors are to be believed, when the restaurant’s present lease runs out subsequent 12 months, landlord Peter Brant will let Prada take over and McDonald’s longtime ship will probably be compelled to navigate the ever-choppy waters of downtown actual property. “All of the Prada salespeople and prospects eat at Lure virtually every day,” McDonald says. “That’s the irony. The restaurant is their cafeteria to a level — my prospects are their prospects.”
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