Electric Avenue: Pop Burger is coming to 58th Street.
photo: Ryan Charles
Forget West 27th Street and the Bowery. Gotham’s latest nightlife boulevard is the unlikely stretch of 58th Street lying between Park and Fifth Avenues. The lynchpin of the burgeoning block is the imminent Pop Burger, a Meatpacking District transplant that aims to bring its Downtown formula – a burger joint fronting for a hip nightclub/lounge – Uptown. It’s hard to miss: three stories tall with an appropriately pop facade that wouldn’t feel out of place in SoHo but instead lies opposite FAO Schwarz and the Apple Store. And it just might jump-start a new late-night scene.
Make way for 58th Street, a longtime blip on the nightlife radar screen thanks to the venerable Eurotrash magnet Au Bar, and now looming larger than ever. Au Bar is no more, replaced by The Grand, a more egalitarian lounge catering to a younger, Flatiron-esque demographic. Across the street from The Grand is Tao, an Asian fantasy of a restaurant with the heart of a nightclub that’s been a late-night hit from day one. And just across Fifth is the new Jour et Nuit (fka Fredericks), an underground spot still in soft-opening mode that features a front dining room backed by a semi-private lounge à la Cipriani in SoHo (8 W. 58th St.; 212-752-6200).
Will 58th Street catch on? Well, that depends entirely upon fickle nightcrawlers. But the Downtown-moves-Uptown trend is already a foregone conclusion in the restaurant world, with boho stalwarts like Blue Ribbon, Clinton St. Baking Co., Fatty Crab and Mermaid Inn all migrating north.
– Curt Gathje