Public may be closing, but the restaurant is going out with a bang — bringing back former chefs for special dinners and hosting other big events beginning this month.
As the New York Times reported last month, the Michelin-starred restaurant is closing in June, having lost its lease due to construction planned for its NoLIta building. But chef Brad Farmerie is looking to make the next few months special, with some old friends coming back to his kitchen.
“PUBLIC is the restaurant that launched my career here in New York, and it’s been one rewarding ride,” he said in a statement. “Over the 14 years PUBLIC was in operation, the restaurant has had so many amazing culinary professionals come through its doors and this gives us a chance to celebrate them and the whole extended PUBLIC family all over the country and world wide.”
The festivities will kick off with the return of chef Chris Rendell and beverage director Chris McPherson, of Australian restaurant Flinders Lane, who met at Public. The duo will prepare a chef’s tasting menu with a special wines-by-the-glass list beginning March 7 and served the whole week.
The menu will feature dishes like roasted corn and jalapeño soup with creme friache and a huitlacoche quesadilla; steamed snapper and prawn dumpling with baby bok choy and sesame-ginger tea, and twice-cooked chicken with ginger garlic relish, shiitake, and star anise broth. Ruben Sanz Ramiro, who was the beverage director at The Monday Room — now known as The Daily, the cocktail den next to Public — will also serve up some of his favorite wines.
Beginning March 16, Matt Lambert, formerly Public’s chef de cuisine and currently at The Musket Room, will offer up his own special tasting menu for a week.
The week of March 21, Farmerie will cook up the menu he made on “Iron Chef America” where he faced off against Cat Cora in a maple syrup battle.
The last week of March, beginning March 28, will feature Matt Hyland — Public’s former sous chef who now, with his wife Emily, runs the wildly popular Emily and Emmy Squared pizza restaurants. Hyland will create a weeklong tasting menu as well.
