A new Seasons?
Restaurateur’s plan to resurrect an NYC icon
A 29-year-old who owns two small eateries in the West Village has big plans: bringing back a new version of the old Four Seasons restaurant, one of the most storied names in New York dining.
There’s just one possible problem: She doesn’t own the rights to the name.
That hasn’t stopped Olivia Wang, who grew up in China along the border of North Korea, from signing a lease at The Centrale, a new luxury residential building at 138 E. 50th St.
And it hasn’t stopped her from hammering out an $8 million plan to build out a 10,000-square-foot space to recreate the atmosphere of the scene of so many power lunches.
“The Four Seasons is a New York institution,” said Wang, who told Side Dish that she never dined at the original location. “It lives in people’s hearts, and I want to bring it back.”
She plans to call the restaurant the Four Seasons-New American Restaurant. That’s the name in her signed lease with Ceruzzi Properties, The Centrale’s developer.
The most recent incarnation of the Four Seasons shut in 2019. One of its co-owners, Julian Niccolini, told Side Dish that the ownership group had sold the rights to Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.
That Four Seasons didn’t return calls for comment.
But Wang is undeterred. She said she and her investors didn’t own the rights to the name — and she’s not sure if they’ll be able to secure them. Asked if she feared a lawsuit, she declined to comment.
Preparations for the Four Seasons-New American Restaurant continue. Wang has even hired a former executive chef of the last Four Seasons restaurant. That chef declined to comment to Side Dish and asked not to be identified.
Wang wouldn’t name her investors for the Midtown space, but she says they are friends. And they come with deep pockets.
Ceruzzi, the developer, has Chinese investors — the real-estate investment firm SMI USA. Wang said people there introduced her to Art Hooper, Ceruzzi’s president.
“Bringing back the Four Seasons Restaurant is good news for the building and for the neighborhood,” said Hooper, who declined to comment on the naming issue.
Last year, Wang opened two fastfood spots by Washington Square Park — Crop Circle, at 126 Macdougal St., which specializes in guokui, a Chinese street food; and Meno, a bubble-tea cafe at 218 Thompson St.
Wang’s version of the Four Seasons is slated to open next year in a room with 30-foot ceilings and a mezzanine. Apartments in the luxury development on the market range from $1.9 million to $39.8 million for a penthouse duplex.
While she never made it to the original, Wang, who came to New York in 2010 and studied music in Buffalo, said she did dine at the Four Seasons’ second iteration on East 49th Street, which opened in 2018 and closed less than a year later.
The original, which operated from 1959 to 2016 in the Seagram Building, had been part of the city’s cultural landscape since it opened. The late starchitect Philip Johnson designed the restaurant, whose interior was declared a local landmark in 1989.
Of course, the original Four Seasons magic will be impossible to replicate, Hooper said.
Still, added Wang, “it will be a beautiful space, like a work of art.”