Former Rainbow Room Chef Opens New Manhattan Restaurant

Rebecca Knapp Adams
Posted: June 14, 1999

Today, chef Waldy Malouf and the Baum & Emil Group -- the team behind New York's famed Rainbow Room until it closed last December -- are opening their new midtown Manhattan restaurant, Beacon, to the public.

The $3 million, 190-seat restaurant, bar and bakery on West 56th Street aims for an open, communal atmosphere focused on its open-fire kitchen with a wood-burning stove, oven and roasting spit.

Malouf's extensive preview dinner menu offered hearty fare such as a first course of grilled sausages and entrees such as wood-roasted wild striped bass with oregano and verjus, grilled calf's liver with apple-smoked bacon and vermouth, and Hubbell squab with foie gras toast and celery salad. Dinner entrees range from $19 to $29.

Wine director and general manager David Friedman put together Beacon's starter wine list in consultation with Kevin Zraly of Windows on the World, which is also operated by the B.E. Group. Friedman said the roughly 110-label list, which emphasizes California and French wines, should nearly double in the coming months.

Beacon's on-site bakery, the source of the restaurant's handmade country rolls and breads, will eventually provide fresh-baked goods to other local Baum & Emil restaurants, which include Wild Blue and Blackbird. (The bakery may also open its own retail outlet in the future.) Ron Davies, former sous chef at the Rainbow Room, will run the bakery with some help from special guest baker Ben Feder, president of Clinton Vineyards in New York's Hudson Valley. Feder carries on a tradition from the Rainbow Room, where he fulfilled his need to bake by lending a hand each Wednesday.

Beacon
25 West 56th St.
New York
Telephone: (212) 332-0500
Open: Lunch, Monday to Friday; dinner, Monday to Saturday

Related articles:

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New York's Rainbow Room Closes Its Doors

April 30, 1998
The Romance of New York
Night after night, the Rainbow Room does what we're setting out to do -- capture the spirit of the city at its best