Somebody Is Finally Paying Attention to the Rainbow Room

Wikipedia

Party like it's 1934.

The Post reports that building permits have been issued for the restaurant and nightclub, famously situated on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center. According to the permits, the 77-year-old establishment's walls and ceilings will be demolished, and its plumbing and mechanical and electrical systems revamped. Its 24-foot floor-to-ceiling windows are also being replaced by identical panes, and extensive repairs are being made to its kitchen, which is located on the 64th floor.

The Rainbow Room closed its doors in 2009 after its operators, the Cipriani family, neglected to pay the rent and reportedly left the place "a mess." Its landlord has hired Elizabeth Blau, a Las Vegas-based restaurant consultant and Iron Chef America judge, to oversee the project.

Hopefully her kitchen repairs will extend to the food, which Anthony Bourdain famously recalled cooking during his year-and-a-half stint at the restaurant. "Any magic I'd imagined about a big-time fancy New York kitchen," he wrote in Kitchen Confidential, "was replaced by a grim pride in creative expediency and the technical satisfaction of being fast enough to keep up, getting away with trickery, deception and disguise." Ah, the good old days.

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