In the News: Cafeteria Restaurant May Yet Happen

••• “A biker gang that viciously attacked a Tribeca father in front of his wife and small child will not get a break on charges, prosecutors said Friday. The Manhattan district attorney said in December that lesser charges were likely in light of a better-than-anticipated recovery by the victim, Alexian Lien, but it changed its tune.” —Daily News

••• Let’s hope so: The Cosmopolitan Hotel “expects to break ground in 60 to 90 days for a building on West Broadway that will be occupied by the Cafeteria restaurant.” —Downtown Post NYC

••• The 20-story gold hotel at 525 Greenwich—between Spring and Vandam—will be called Hotel Hugo (and not Hotel Soho) and it’ll have “an Italian restaurant and a rooftop bar.” Hope they’re not relying on foot traffic. —DNAinfo

••• Good Morning America picked up the story about fake reviews on Seamless—thanks for the credit!—and got the owner of Lily’s Japanese and Chinese Restaurant to weigh in…. “Andy Lin […] told ABCNews.com the mix-up was likely related to the previous owner of the restaurant. Lin said he bought Lily’s about one month ago, and he has owned another business called Beijing Restaurant in Danbury, Conn., for about five years. ‘I don’t know what the other owner was doing,’ Lin said.”

••• “A new proposal by the Extell Development Corporation could bring the first batch of affordable housing to Hudson Square, following the neighborhood’s major rezoning last year. Extell wants to construct a 22-story residential building at 68 Charlton St., between Hudson and Varick Sts., on a currently empty lot where, several years ago, the developer had once sought to build a hotel.” —The Villager (via Curbed)

••• The building under construction at 19 Park Place will have heated sidewalks. —New York Times

••• This is cool. “In a comment posted on yesterday’s Curbed Classics profile of abandoned early skyscraper Temple Court [5 Beekman], a reader shared this link to a 360-degree view inside of the aging structure taken by photographer Sam Rohn.” I’m still upset with you for not getting me inside before the renovation work started.

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6 Comments

  1. I thought the Cosmopolitan had scrapped the plans for a new building and was going to renovate the existing space.

  2. But will it still include “Cafeteria”?

  3. Disregard…..the article says yes.

  4. Regarding the recent stories about Seamless, I recently learned that they charge restaurants around 14% of the “total order” amount, including tax and tip. So if you include a tip in your Seamless order and the restaurant owner pays the total amount of that tip to the delivery guy (as I think the restaurant is required to do by law), the restaurant is forced to pay out of its own pocket the 14% taken out by Seamless. And they are also required to pay the full amount of sales tax to the State even though Seamless is taking out its 14% from the customers’ bills. I understand the reasons why restaurants ultimately submit to this pricing arrangement, BUT I think that if our favorite restaurants offer a web ordering alternative on their own websites or otherwise, we should seriously consider ordering that way instead. The Seamless cut is really large when you consider the low margins of restaurants, especially those that are really small businesses, not part of chains or benefitting from corporate support.