In the News: Drama at the Hair Salon

••• Congratulations to Yves for today’s New York Times review: “Speaking of laid-back restaurants where you can enjoy a pleasant and unpretentious summer meal, have you been to Yves? It opened without much of a splash about two years ago, despite occupying a handsome, spare dining room whose white interior makes the most of the afternoon sunlight that hits its Tribeca corner, opposite the restaurant Locanda Verde. I missed the original chef’s tenure, but lately I’ve been intrigued by the cooking of Alex Baker, who took over in February. She is Paris-trained, having gone to culinary school and worked at Spring and Le Chateaubriand there, before coming to New York to help open Rebelle in 2015. At Yves, she interprets French food with an appealingly relaxed, seasonal attitude.”

••• “‘Summer House’ star Lauren Wirkus is […] preparing to sue Ethan Rose Salon in Tribeca for using her likeness without her consent, an insider told Page Six on Monday.” Leaving aside the merits of Wirkus’s complaint—which has more to do with an investment she made in the salon that she subsequently decided she wanted refunded—I’d bet that the article was planted by someone in her camp to try to shame the salon into a settlement. Salon owner Crystal Torres wasn’t having it. In an email to the Post, she wrote, “Lauren Wirkus has [an] outstanding bill of 90K of unpaid beauty services from April 2017 – March 2018. In addition Lauren bought into the company in 2017, with a discounted buy-in price contingent she perform her duties from the shareholder agreement which she wrote and agreed on … in Dec 2017, she quit her title as active managing partner of the company, stating she doesn’t have the time to continue her obligations, but wants to continue doing marketing in exchange for beauty services. And she wanted her money returned to her. I told her that it’s basic common sense, she was not entitled to a refund just because she changed her mind. She didn’t buy a lollipop, she bought into a business. There are no refunds. The truth was she just wanted to play being a business owner to look good on TV since she couldn’t land a guy.” (“Summer House” is apparently a Bravo “reality” show.)

••• Massimo Sola, the Michelin-starred chef who opened Sola Pasta Bar in SoHo but left (he is still a partner), has joined Dopo La Spiaggia, a pair of Italian restaurants in Sag Harbor and East Hampton, N.Y.” Does that mean his Sola Lab restaurant on Beekman isn’t happening?

••• The Tin Building at the Seaport District has been completely dismantled. The Howard Hughes Corporation “plans to rebuild the Tin Building about 33 feet east of the old location, close to [Pier 17’s] west end. That will move it out of the floodplain and create breathing room between the structure and the highway trestle. Once reconstituted, it will house a big seafood marketplace to be run by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The born-again Tin Building [rendering below] is to open at some point in 2020.” —New York Post

 

3 Comments

  1. I have been told Sola is indeed opening in just a few weeks on Beekman.

  2. “90K of unpaid beauty services from April 2017 – March 2018.”?! And here I am getting my haircut twice a year.