Openings

Brian Bieler Will Cook at Emma Cleary’s Long-Awaited Project, the Mott

Photo: Daniel Maurer

Yesterday, the construction paper came off of Emma Cleary’s much-anticipated endeavor in the recently whitewashed Double Happiness/Palais Royale space. As you can see, there’s still work to be done on the upstairs restaurant, but we can now confirm that it will be called the Mott (no relation to the Eldridge, the Delancey, or the Suffolk). The executive chef will be Brian Bieler, a Kansas farm boy who showed off French and greenmarket influences at the short-lived Fillip’s (he was also chef de cuisine at Bouley for a year). Bieler hopes to start serving a “Soho seasonal” menu by early next month. Sometime after that, the downstairs lounge, Lucky’s Eleven (no relation to Lucky 13, Lucky Eight, Lucky Jack’s, or Lucky Cheng’s) will open in the basement, which of course was said to be a former speakeasy and a mob-run gay bar before it became Double Happiness. And now we go back to waiting.

Brian Bieler Will Cook at Emma Cleary’s Long-Awaited Project, the Mott