Eugene Remm’s Next Act: From Nightlife to Chef-Driven Dining

This is no more around 1 am in Tenjune. Almost lines down the block at 5 pm It’s about caviar-topped lobster rolls, aged rib caps and zucchini. brûlée. It’s about finding great chefs, giving them the best infrastructure, trusting their culinary ideas and going out of their way.

After the success of The Corner Store again Eighty SixEugene Remm is poised to solidify his position as one of New York’s—and the nation’s—most important and prosperous brokers. In February, Remm, Tilman Fertitta and Catch Hospitality Group will unveil their latest restaurant, Or’esh, across the street from The Corner Store in SoHo. Then they will dive into the extensive maintenance of Hold on In New York and Los Angeles, both locations are reopening this spring. After that, there’s a to-be-announced all-day West Village restaurant slated to debut in the fall. Then there’s the fall opening of The Corner Store The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Remm moves from big, clubby restaurants to more intimate places where the food comes first, even if Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter are dining together. Catch in New York, for example, is turning its fourth floor into an event space and changing from a 350-seat restaurant to a 120-seat restaurant, Remm tells the Observer.

“We will also be introducing Catch to people who haven’t come yet and people who may not have come,” Remm said. “And now we’re doing it through a culinary lens. We’re keeping the DNA of everything people love about Catch, but we’re relaunching it as a food first instead of a party first place.”

After seeing how Catch Culinary’s dishes delight guests at The Corner Store and The Eighty Six, Remm is eager to see what his kitchen team comes up with next. Remm has long been front and center at Catch, which also has locations in Las Vegas, Aspen, Miami and Scottsdale, but he realizes it’s good to step back and let his people cook.

“I have a lot of confidence in chef Michael Vignola,” said Remm. “Eighty Six was created 100 percent with his culinary team. That was the first project where I wasn’t as close to the location as others.”

Or’esh, a Mediterranean restaurant specializing in Levantine cuisine, will also be a chef-driven operation. It is headed by Nadav Greenberg, formerly the executive chef at Eyal Shani’s Michelin-starred Shmon.e.

Instead of serving pita and hummus like countless other Mediterranean restaurants, the 75-seat Or’esh will serve a Jerusalem bagel with baba ghanoush, matbucha, mint tzatziki, olive oil and za’atar. Zucchini A brûlée with sheep’s milk yogurt, mint and a hot piece of challah will be a new riff on bread and dip that is at the same time warm, cold, sweet, sour, sweet and lightly spiced.

Or’esh’s charcoal-fired kitchen, with a custom grill, will feature dishes such as the 67-layer wagyu flatiron skewer, lamb kebabs, sweetbreads, dry butterfly dorade and salty branzino. There will also be Ora King’s charcoal-kissed salmon crudo, grilled vegetables, smoked chicken livers, homemade pasta and mashed potatoes with caviar.

“The Mediterranean is a big region, and we’re very focused on the Levant,” Greenberg, who spent six months working with engineers to create Or’esh’s grill, told the Observer. “It’s east of the Mediterranean Sea, it focuses on the taste of olive oil, za’atar, fire, flame, sea, lamb that you have in the Mediterranean.”

At the same time, Greenberg loves seasonal cooking so much that he will be changing the vegetables in his market salad every month. Along with cucumbers and tomatoes, there may be turnips or kohlrabi as the year progresses.

“I want to be honest with you,” said Remm. “Two years ago, I didn’t know what Levantine means. The only reason why I made this restaurant is Nadav. When I ate his food, it made me happy. It made me jealous. I wanted something like that within our portfolio. This project is based on the heart and spirit of what I think Nadav represents. And the way he interacts with the front house I consider him a 360 keeper. When I meet special people like Nadav, it makes me want to do something.

At this point in his career, 20 years after he and Mark Birnbaum opened the Meatpacking District nightclub Tenjune and walked the path that led to the creation of Catch a block away in 2011, Remm wants to be the hardware while his chefs are the software.

His hotspots have helped a new generation of high-profile operators, including Adam Landsman (founder of Sunday Hospitality), Pavan Pardasani (newly appointed global CEO of JKS Restaurants) and Eric Marx (chief food and beverage executive at Think Hospitality). And Remm is now on the hunt for killer apps in the form of great culinary minds.

“The way I look at it is like, I want to be an iPhone,” Remm said. “But Nadav can be Instagram.”

Remm says he would like to open French and Italian restaurants if he finds the right people. He’s open to the idea of ​​a second restaurant with Greenberg, which could be anything from an all-day spot to a more upscale concept than Or’esh.

“This is a part of the business that I believe is a huge opportunity for growth, where we can include chefs who are amazing at what they do,” said Remm. “We are very good at what we do, making sure that the place is built on time, making sure that everything is working properly, so that the chef and the worker are who they need to be. And that, I think, is a business model that you can do until you’re 100 years old, and continue to create a platform for people to fulfill their dreams. What’s better than that?”