Manhattan seller Robert Mnuchin is the newest artwork market energy participant to enter the restaurant enterprise, opening a French-Italian eatery together with his daughter Valerie Mnuchin on New York’s Shelter Island, a secluded spot nestled between the north and south forks of Lengthy Island.
Léon 1909 is open for its first full summer season after opening late final season in a former financial institution constructing. The restaurant is called for Robert’s father, who was born in 1909 and whose love for journeys to Europe’s Mediterranean coast impressed the restaurant’s setting. A framed portrait of him hangs within the restaurant.
The Mnuchins’ restaurant serves French and Italian delicacies utilizing regional components with a wood-burning fireside on the centre of the restaurant. It’s one in every of a number of new or refurbished eating places to open on the island because the Covid-19 pandemic introduced an inflow of transplants and seasonal residents from New York Metropolis.
“We wished to make one thing that may be a type of neighborhood hub, open year-round,” Valerie advised North Forker final 12 months.
Robert Mnuchin isn’t the primary blue-chip seller to enterprise into the restaurant enterprise. Megadealer Larry Gagosian is a part-owner of Kappo Masa, the high-end sushi restaurant situated beneath his Madison Avenue gallery. Final month, Swiss sellers Iwan and Manuela Wirth introduced they might open a restaurant and bar in New York’s Soho neighborhood, throughout the road from a brand new Hauser & Wirth area, the sellers’ third within the metropolis. The Wirths already function a handful of eating places and pubs within the US and the UK.
Mnuchin isn’t any stranger to watching his kids step into high-pressure ventures: Valerie’s half-brother Steven served as treasury secretary underneath US president Donald Trump.
