Thanks to B. for spotting this one: Andrea Strong, who writes for Eater and Bon Appetit, posted on her Substack that Keith McNally’s youngest child, George, 22, has taken the Shigure Sake Bar space on Church and White. (Emily Sundberg reported it first on her Substack.) There was work going on there last February, but nothing had popped up — till now.

Shigure closed in 2022 after 15 years in that spot. There has not been a liquor license application at CB1 that I have seen — maybe it can be transferred even four years later?

This is not the only second generation McNally hosting in the neighborhood: Keith and Lynn Wagenknecht’s son, Harry, helps manage The Odeon. (You will recall that Keith and Lynn and Keith’s brother, Brian, founded The Odeon together in 1980; Lynn now owns it herself.)

Strong writes that George McNally has already chosen a chef — Kristina Ramos, a Filipino-American raised here who has worked at l’abeille along with other starred places — and that the menu will be French-ish and the restaurant will be imagined by Keith’s longtime designer Ian McPheely and architect Richard Lewis, who did Pastis, Balthazar, Tavern on the Green, Minetta Tavern, etc.

From Strong’s post: “The son of Keith and his second wife Alina, George was born in the States but grew up in London. He left high school early and began working in restaurants as a teenager in a pub and a French restaurant. He moved to New York four years ago and started working as a bartender at Balthazar and helped with the opening of Minetta Tavern in DC.

“All along, he’s been nursing an idea to open a place of his own. ‘I thought I wouldn’t jump right into it right away, but eventually I’ll try it,’ he told me. ‘Then, maybe a year ago, I started looking at spaces.'”

More TK — especially if they come before CB1.