Grub Street

How do you usually spend your lunches? If you’re anything like us, it’s hunched over your desk, scarfing down scrapple you brought from home in a Tupperware tub. Gone, in other words, are the glory days of the leisurely workweek lunch. And so this slow change has claimed another victim: Café Gray. After March 5, you’ll no longer be able to flex your expense account during the midday hours at what Platt calls “probably the most fun” of the “self-important” food-court establishments at Time Warner Center.

Spokesperson Stephanie Faison says the move will open the place up for those always-profitable corporate events and allow chef Gray Kunz to “focus on one meal, seven nights a week.” (It’ll also grant him more time to put together Grayz, the public lounge–private dining venue he plans to open in September.) Not only was Café Gray suffering at lunch, but across the street, Jean Georges is practically giving it away at $28 for any two courses in the main room. “If we didn’t,” Vongerichten tells us, “there would be no one in here.” Maybe the corporate types should return to the days of midday martini-swilling?

Earlier:
Gray Kunz Finds a Sweet New Business Model
Jean-Georges Vongerichten on His Gift for Delegation