We’re hearing from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Michael Klein that controversial ex-restaurateur Neil Stein (formerly of Striped Bass, Avenue B and Rouge) is considering getting back into the game. The word is that he’s working with the Morris House on opening a new restaurant in the former Restaurant M space.
Given that, the last we heard, he was looking at opening a boutique hotel… This all makes some knd of perverse sense.
Update: Dan Gross has more info.
The restaurateur-turned-federal-inmate-turned-free-man is working with Morris House Hotel (225 S. 8th) owners Michael DiPaolo and Gene LeFevre in bringing a restaurant to their hotel where M recently closed.DiPaolo confirmed yesterday that he and LeFevre are looking to lease the space to a restaurant and that he’s working with Stein on that and on possibly expanding the popular 16-room boutique hotel elsewhere on the block of South 8th. Stein, whose restaurant empire formerly included Rouge, Bleu, Striped Bass and Avenue B, dreamed up big plans for a boutique hotel while locked up at FPC Schuylkill for a year on a tax-evasion conviction. He told us about his desires in a May 2006 letter from prison. Stein’s enlisted the help of local real estate developer Lindsay Ratkovich, who has the business in her blood. The Penn grad is the daughter of Los Angeles real estate titan Wayne Ratkovich. They’re working on incorporating as BST Ventures, which Lindsay says stands for “blood, sweat, and tears.”
Inqlings [Inquirer]
