Across Lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn, this week’s storm dealt a stinging blow to New York City’s restaurant industry. With power out and walk-in refrigerators warming up, “we’re basically going to lose all our product,” said Andrew Carmellini, the chef at the Dutch in SoHo and Locanda Verde in TriBeCa.
That’s not all he lost. In advance of Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Carmellini rented a car to help make sure that around-town transportation would be taken care of. He parked the car on 23rd Street. “The car got destroyed in the flood,” he said. “The water went over the dashboard.”
Then there was the truffles. Mr. Carmellini had been gearing up for his annual Trufflepalooza festival at Locanda Verde. “Now he’s got $15,000 or $16,000 worth of truffles going bad,” said Ken Friedman, a partner in that restaurant, as well as in properties associated with April Bloomfield like The Breslin, The John Dory Oyster Bar and the Spotted Pig. “We thought of doing a pop-up at the Breslin, but the chefs at the Breslin said nobody wants truffles.”
It’s not hard to see why restaurant folks, at least, might not be in the mood for luxury. Matt Abramcyk, an entrepreneur behind several bars and restaurants in TriBeCa, including Super Linda, estimated that he had lost $40,000 in spoiled food. Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali, who own several restaurants downtown, also suffered large losses, including at Eataly, their food store and restaurant space opposite Madison Square Park.
The Spotted Pig, in the West Village, has no power, no heat and no running water. “I thought, can’t we just open with candlelight and bartenders?” Mr. Friedman said. “But we have no bathrooms, so that wouldn’t work.’’
In the financial district, flooding left Delmonico’s, which originally opened in 1837, in disarray. “The water picked everything up and spun it round,” said Dennis Turcinovic, one of the owners. “It was almost like a ‘Wizard of Oz’ effect. One of the refrigerators ended up in a private dining room.”
But at Russ & Daughters, the iconic appetizing shop on the Lower East Side since 1914, Josh Russ Tupper, an owner, raced before, during and after the hurricane to put fish on ice, place supplies of caviar in “secure locations” and borrow a generator.
Moving quickly led to “very minimal losses,” he said.
He could count himself lucky compared to Brooklyn restaurants like the Governor in Dumbo and the River Café, built on a barge in the East River. Both had substantial flooding.
Danny Meyer tweeted that the power loss had forced the shutdown of much of his citywide empire, including Maialino, Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern. Remarkably, though, his newest restaurant, the North End Grill in the much-battered Battery Park City, was spared. Its chef, Floyd Cardoz, tweeted that it never lost refrigeration and was opening with a limited menu on Wednesday afternoon.