As you may have noticed if you were wandering near the Palace Hotel recently, the century-old House of Shields bar has been closed for several months, getting a facelift from new proprietor Dennis Leary (Canteen, The Sentinal, The Golden West). Via a Bauer blog post this a.m. — in which Bauer connects the dots of the current upscale-food-in-downscale-settings trend back to the opening of Canteen in 2005 — we learn that Leary is trying to get House of Shields reopened before the holidays, but that he won’t be rolling out food service anytime soon.
Update: The Scoop fleshes out some more of the details of the painstaking restoration of the place, and reveals the reopening date: Thursday. They speak with bar manager Eric Passetti who says that while they will be doing some well-made cocktails, this won’t be a “temple to mixology.”
Also, as for the food, it will likely come along eventually in the form of a late-night menu with “an emphasis on easy-to-eat, utensils-free food.”
The pioneering ways of Canteen’s Dennis Leary [Between Meals/Scoop]
House of Shields, restored to its glory, opens Thursday [Scoop]
Earlier: Dennis Leary to Save House of Shields from Douchedom [Grub Street]
Learn the History of Endangered Saloon the House of Shields [Grub Street]
