The Post reports that Ed Brown’s Eighty One (“the elegant restaurant that served possibly the best food in the Upper West Side’s history,” per Steve Cuozzo) will close after dinner service on April 4. When it opened in February of 2008, Platt’s two-star review reported that “if you’re willing to pay $28 for a ration of exceptionally tasty leeks, you won’t be disappointed,” but with the financial crash, it seems few people were willing to pay such prices (not to mention the “outlandish $39 sticker price” of the warm smoked salmon). “When the world fell apart, we changed to cope with it, with a lower-priced menu and more accessible food,” Brown tells the Post. “But we weren’t able to change people’s perceptions that we were a special-occasion place.” Brown will now concentrate on his Chodorow joint, Ed’s Chowder House, where Alec Baldwin recently chatted up chef John Miele while dining solo at the bar.
