Acclaimed Bowery Restaurant Cherche Midi To Close, Filing Says

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Keith McNally’s critically acclaimed Lower East Side restaurant Cherche Midi will close in June, according to a state notice.

The restaurant, located at 282 Bowery, opened in 2014 to rave reviews. It was named a critic’s pick by the New York Times.

The restaurant will close on June 11, according to a notice filed with the state. Under New York law, private employers must provide written notice if their business will close, suffer a mass layoff or relocate. The notice says that Cherche Midi will lay off 46 employees because of a "plant closing." The closing date is listed as June 11 on the notice. It lists the reason for the relocation as "economic."

Emails and a phone message left at the restaurant and the Keith McNally restaurant group were not immediately returned.

Cherche Midi was another in a string of popular spots from prolific McNally, who was once dubbed "the restaurateur who invented downtown" by the New York Times. McNally shuttered another of his popular neighborhood restaurants, the Lower East Side's Schiller’s Liquor Bar, last year.

In 2016, McNally penned a piece for the Times noting how much the New York restaurant scene has changed since he opened his first restaurant, the Odeon, in 1980.

"One crucial change that’s hurt restaurants in Manhattan is the drastic rise in rents," he wrote. "During my first 30 years as a restaurateur, I expected to pay around 7 percent of my income on rent. Today, it’s at least 14 percent."

McNally wrote that the dramatic increase in Manhattan rents was discouraging interesting restaurants from opening in the borough.

"This is an incalculable loss to the life, in particular the creative life, of the city," he wrote in the piece. "It’s also why many of the most dynamic new restaurants (and certainly restaurateurs) are in Brooklyn and upstate. Why this has been allowed to happen I’m not sure, but it’s far from healthy."

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