Monday’s much-anticipated opening of Jupiter, a subterranean Italian restaurant in Rockefeller Center from the owners of the buzzy SoHo eatery, King, makes it official: Midtown, once viewed by New Yorkers as an office lunch wasteland, is poised to become Manhattan’s latest gravitational center for the city's visitors and natives alike.
THE BACK STORY
• Over the past four years, the real-estate firm Tishman Speyer has poured millions into reviving Rockefeller Center, the once-neglected constellation of Art Deco commercial buildings between 48th Street and 51st Street, from top — Radio City Music Hall’s rooftop garden, Radio Park — to bottom — the revamped 50 Rockefeller Plaza lobby by Studio Mellone now features handsome terrazzo-and-brass flooring and lighting by Apparatus.
• Even the magical, family-friendly ice rink is now lined with of-the-moment reservation rulers like Jupiter and Naro, the Korean fine-dining spot run by Junghyun Park and his wife, Jeungeun, the masterminds behind Atomix, the Murray Hill tasting-menu destination.
• The secret to Tishman Speyer’s Midtown makeover? Tastemakers below 14th Street as tenants, such as Rough Trade, a record shop imported from Brooklyn, and Pebble Bar, the Pete Davidson-backed watering hole housed in a four-story townhouse.
• Ever since last year’s arrival of Lodi, an Italian café from Ignacio Mattos of Estela and Altro Paradiso fame, the plaza has functioned like a gourmand’s advent calendar, delivering highbrow treat after highbrow treat — Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr’s French bistro, Le Rock, in July; Five Acres, Greg Baxtrom’s farm-to-table project, in September; and now Naro and Jupiter — in the months leading up to next week’s tree lighting ceremony on Nov. 30.
“Not every real estate developer would treat the area as such a creative undertaking. I look at it as the anti-Hudson Yards,” said Matt Kliegman, who co-owns Pebble Bar. “Finally, this extraordinary New York landmark has been designed for actual New Yorkers.”
NOW STAYING
New Passion Project Paradises
• Hacienda Los Milagros, a RP Miller and Studio Antoine-designed estate in Punta Mita, is a colorful architectural love letter to Mexico’s thrilling contemporary arts-and-crafts scene and handicraft heritage. Earlier this month, Architectural Digest labeled the one-of-a-kind property "a haven of magic and wonder."
