By Scott Etkin and Lisa Kava
Dahlia, a cocktail lounge backed by actor Michael Imperioli – best known for his role in “The Sopranos” – his wife Victoria, who is a designer, and restaurateur Jeremy Wladis, opened quietly Tuesday on Columbus Avenue between West 72rd and 73nd streets.
The opening comes just a few months after the same team opened Scarlet, a cocktail lounge on West 83rd Street, in December 2023. Wladis owns several UWS establishments, including Good Enough to Eat, Nina’s Great Burrito Bar, and Big Gay Ice Cream, as well as the two restaurants next door to Scarlet and Dahlia, Fred’s and Harvest Kitchen.
The new cocktail lounge will be “Hermes orange” and was entirely designed by Victoria Imperioli, Wladis told West Side Rag Wednesday on the phone.
“I’ve always felt there was kind of a need for a neighborhood adult lounge in the 70s,” Wladis said. “I reached out to Victoria, who is my business partner at Scarlet, along with Michael, and said — ‘Hey Victoria, why don’t we redo the Harvest Kitchen restaurant and change the side room to a new lounge.'”
Harvest Kitchen has long had the side room, which it used for private parties and other events, but Wladis thought the space could be better enjoyed as a cocktail lounge.
“Dahlia is small, intimate, and in the same vein as Scarlet,” he added. The music will be “more Lou Reed-type style and era,” while the food will be overseen by the same chef as at Scarlet, Joey Fortunato.
Along with the orange interior, there are six tables running along one side of the space and a row of stools along the other. Before Harvest Kitchen, the storefront was Fish on the Fly, a seafood restaurant. Dahlia will be open daily starting at 5 p.m. (Thanks to Ed for the tip.)
Harvest Kitchen, is becoming simply Harvest as part of the opening of the above-mentioned Dahlia, restaurant owner Jeremy Wladis confirmed to the Rag. Harvest, located at 269 Columbus Avenue, directly next to Dahlia, will have a different menu from its days as Harvest Kitchen now focusing more on “healthier foods.”
“We changed Harvest, [Victoria] redecorated it, and now it’s beautiful,” Wladis said. “It was a cool neighborhood place…it is still a neighborhood place but now it is cooler and hipper.”
The ownership group renovated and redecorated the space without ever closing Harvest Kitchen. The space opened as Harvest on Tuesday. Harvest and Dahlia are separate restaurants, and you’ll need different reservations to get into each.
FunFit, a multi-sports program for kids ages one to nine, is moving from West 110th Street and Broadway to 752 West End Avenue (at West 97th Street in The Paris Building). “My wife and I have run [FunFit] for the past six years at the synagogue [Ramath Orah] in the basement. And [now that] we’re expanding it’s time to move to our own storefront,” said owner Danny Kron on a call with West Side Rag. The new location has two floors and 22-foot ceilings. Half the floor space will be covered with soft mats and half with indoor soccer turf. The new location is expected to be open by June for summer camp, which will run through August. The current space will remain open until the move takes place.
Children’s Art Classes, an art program for young kids and teens, is also planning to open at 752 West End Avenue in June. Children’s Art Classes was founded by a mother-daughter team and operates on a franchise model with locations across the country, but none so far in New York City. “I loved art as a kid and I wanted to go to art school, but I never thought I was competitive enough to make it, and so I ended up going for my business degrees instead,” Sue Buffolino, owner of the new UWS location, told the Rag. “It’s kind of ideal that the universe was telling me this is the time in your life to do this, and it all fell into place.” The program will feature about 40 different creative mediums, including painting, pencil, charcoal, pastels, and watercolors. A kiln is also being installed at the UWS location. Sign-ups for a free trial are available on the company’s website. “It makes me so excited because with everything going on in the world, being able to see kids do something awesome that doesn’t involve computers and social media is very inspiring,” Buffolino said. “It gives me hope.”
Snack Thyme by Modern, a take-out snack shop, opened earlier this spring at 472 Columbus Avenue (at West 83rd Street). Residents may have missed it since its bright signage just went up this week. Snack Thyme is under the same ownership as the restaurants Thyme & Tonic and Modern Bread and Bagel. Snack Thyme shares space with Thyme & Tonic but has its own entrance. They serve gluten-free, dairy-free, and kosher snacks to-go, including pretzels with mustard, hot dogs, churros, and popcorn. They also serve frozen lemonade to-go. The space was formerly a soup-and-cracker bar called Eight Ladles which closed in 2022.
Birria-Landia Tacos Truck, a Mexican food truck that has received two stars from The New York Times, started operating on May 17th at the southwest corner of West 72nd Street and Broadway. In addition to tacos, the menu includes consommé, tostadas (a toasted tortilla dish), and mulitas (corn tortillas with fillings, similar to a quesadilla). The first Birria-Landia food truck was in Queens, and now there are others stationed on the Lower East Side, in Jackson Heights, Queens, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Fordham in the Bronx. Daily hours for the UWS truck are 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.
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Nice to see so many openings!
On a totally unrelated note, I was recently passing by the old food Emporium space on the corner of 68th and Broadway. It closed in 2013, was Lowe’s for a few years (as I write this, I wonder why I didn’t refer to it as the old Lowe’s space) until that closed too. It’s been empty for years now. Is there really no business interested in such a large, renovated space? More over, do the owners of the building, whoever they are, really prefer an empty lot over a business that could pay them rent?
With the exception of the new Morton Williams, it’s been dull in the 60s on Broadway, on Columbus and on Amsterdam for ages in terms of new exciting businesses. (And I wouldn’t put Morton Williams in that category anyway.)
Maybe the WSR could do a piece on long-empty lots and why no one is interested in putting a business there.
My only thought is that because it’s such a big space (and Lowe’s is probably still paying the rent on a 10 year lease) the landlord wants to make sure that the new tenants don’t leave before the 10 year lease ends. Lots of bread, pastry, coffee places opening up, which are in and out places, big stores not doing as well on the UWS. (My 2 cents) 🙂
It’s not just the West 60’s. Huge stretches of Broadway have vacant store fronts. It is even worse the further north you go. The West 90’s, 100’s have tons of empty store fronts and scaffolding blocking the few open businesses. Maybe the buildings are all old, need tons of renovations to make them viable spaces, and charge exorbitant rents.
Is FunFit going to mean that the pool is closing?
No, I don’t believe so. I spoke with someone who worked at FunFit at the Hippo Spring Fair and he said it’s the same building, but not that they’re taking over the swimming space.
no, absolutely not. Besides the steady morning lap swim clients like me, I see plenty of kids taking swim lessons, especially during school breaks, so that business appears to be healthy. And there’s an ART school for kids coming in too, so I think FUNFIT must be using the old gym space of the health club.
Y’all buried the lede here. Birria-landia coming to UWS is much more exciting than another bar from some minor celebrity
Agreed Mikey Gee! I’m far more likely to hit up the truck before anything else mentioned here.
I’m all for food trucks but the SW corner of 72nd and B’way is already a horribly congested area. Odd hours as well. Who’s going to be on that corner buying food at 1:00 am?
I’ll be there as well. It’s now impossible to get food around here past 10pm aside from McDonalds. Wasn’t like this years ago.
Plenty. Lots of drug sales on that block.
Yep, that’s my block, I hadn’t taken the dealers into consideration. ; )
@caly – I will be there
me too
So. Mikey Gee, a few thoughts. Imperioli is hardly “some minor celebrity”, and not sure what you mean by “y’all buried the lede (sic).
The snide remark about an owner of Dahlia was very rude, but there’s no grammatical or spelling problem with “ya’ll buried the lede.”
Ish, have you heard of the expression “buried the lede”? It’s a newspaper term. You can google it.
Fair to quibble about Imperioli being minor, but I hardly think his status alone merits his bar making the headline. A lot of celebrities live in NYC, and I don’t really care whether or not my local bar is run by one.
It’s not a (sic). Lede was the correct usage.
Lede is a word. Check it out.
Wondering how the Birria-Landia food truck gets the space to “park”?
Guaranteed parking space?
And every day?
Might WSR clarify?
I hope the Dahlia business plan didn’t forget about Owls Tail and De Capo within a few blocks. There *are* cocktail lounges in the West 70s but always happy to have more…
Also curious about how the food truck can decide to situate – is there a parking permit system for food trucks? And be on the street til 1 am?
Will more food trucks move uptown when Congestion Pricing is implemented?
Do you think it would make any sense for food trucks to forgo the lucrative midtown lunch crowd to avoid a once a day $15 fee?
UWS Dad,
Questions are important – as the saying goes, there are no bad questions.
It is not unreasonable to speculate that some trucks might come uptown with CP.
Anyway, it looks like there is a glut of food carts/food trucks throughout Manhattan. They are competing/cannibalizing each other and local food places/cafes etc.
The thyme and modern spots are quite bothersome and occupy valuable space. They close every Friday night and Saturday for religious observances, which is problematic when you consider three restaurants in a row are all closed simultaneously. It would be more efficient to allocate this space to businesses that operate daily and can make better use of it.
There’s plenty of space and plenty of restaurants. Also, people are allowed to set their business hours on any basis they like, including (especially) religious observances.
No one’s “allocating” the space, and certainly not with “efficiency” as a goal. The restaurant owners are paying for the space, and if they can afford to close on Fridays and Saturdays, then that’s their business, not yours.
How would that be “more efficient”? Businesses can operate with whatever hours they’d like, as long as they pay rent and aren’t a nuisance (in a legal sense) to the community. Those are wonderful businesses. Get out of here.
Sounds a lot like “don’t rent space to Jews”!
This approach of consistently portraying oneself as a victim is becoming less effective. It’s important to focus on the issue at hand rather than assigning labels. For instance, I previously wrote a critical review about another local market that closes at 7 PM and also remains shut on Sundays. In a bustling city like NYC, it’s essential for businesses to maintain hours that accommodate everyone, including the working class.
I stopped by the food truck on w 72 St. between Broadway and West End 2 days ago to order chicken tacos. I was amazed to find out it does not offer tacos with chicken. Only with meat, I was told. Won’t be going there again.
luther – the taco shop makes eats based on ‘Birria’ (as per the shop name), which is beef-based (and in some cases goat). It should not amaze you at all that they don’t offer tacos made with chicken as it is not the type of food the shop is cooking. Other mexican shops in the area should have chicken tacos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birria
birria landia closes on West 72 closes much earlier than 1am, not sure why all the online sources say 1am.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7XPqtiRG6f – their IG page now says 12AM
Also they seem to have relocated to Amsterdam and 70th already. Not sure if that’s temporary or permanent but their instagram account has changed the location.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7XPqtiRG6f
It seems like they did officially change to Amsterdam / 70th. Details are not clear, their response in the comments was “we had to relocate”.
The IG page also says that their hours are 5PM-12AM now (not 5PM-1AM).