The folks who operate 1803, the Cajun-Creole restaurant on Reade and Church, hope to take over 200 Church, the former Tribeca Kitchen/Marathi, which just closed this past Sunday. This is great news for that prime corner, which Andreas Koutsoudakis (Jr.) had renovated twice — and beautifully — in the past couple years. But there’s trouble on the regulation side, and I hope CB1 can make some efforts to help out a respected operator in the neighborhood.

“We are planning to open a restaurant (Rafael) in the space but unfortunately plans got delayed due to the community board,” a rep from the restaurant group told me. “We are still working on this and will let you know when we get a better idea of opening date!”

Rafi Hasid and his restaurant group also owned Homemade by Miriam, the Mediterranean to-go place that was on West Broadway just south of Chambers until it closed a year ago. They continue to operate Miriam in Park Slope, which he opened in 2005 and is a top spot with BK locals and food bloggers. (I hope this will be Miriam West.)

Hasid and his lawyer were on Zoom at the July meeting of CB1’s Licensing Committee, but were (unfairly, in my opinion) postponed after a 15-minute tech glitch, then claims that the applicant did not have signatures from the condo residents upstairs (this is a new rule as far as I know) and that they did not file a seating plan with their application (which their lawyer said they did).

The whole meeting was a fiasco, yet the applicant made the valid point that he was the one being forced to pay the price — literally.

“Every month costs us a lot of money,” Hasid said at the meeting. “To have us wait for two months because of a technicality, it’s too much.”

The board does not meet in August, and he was not offered a chance to be on the July Executive Committee meeting agenda.