Add this one to the fall-preview gang: Former lawyer Avi Stieglitz (currently the head of investment firm Bulldog Real Estate) tells us he’s opening a restaurant, Blue Elm, with Malik Fall, a Senegal native who worked as an executive chef at Asia de Cuba and China Grill before becoming a private chef for the Rockefeller family and opening his own restaurant, Nolia, in the East Village. Fall attended culinary school in France and has traveled in Asia — if you’ve tried his food at Boucarou, you know it’s a fusion of French, African, and Asian. Among the shareable plates currently planned: an “Avocat Aux Crevettes Senegalais,” consisting of a dozen shrimp stuffed with avocado, chickpeas, Spanish onion, tomatoes, and hard-boiled eggs, and a halibut that’s served in a tomato-saffron broth, with pumpkin biscuits, cabbage, and lima beans. There’ll also be a sushi menu (Fall makes his rice pop with homemade vinegar). Blue Elm will open in the former Regaté space at 198 Orchard Street, near Houston, on September 17 — that’s a block away from Bia Garden (which was slated to open tonight, though there’s no answer) as well as from the Camille Becerra project that’s coming to 146 Orchard Street.
