Are Falai and Falai Panetteria on Clinton Street being sold? Grub Street picked up on an item in restaurant insider Steve Kamali’s newsletter, indicating: “Falai’s ten-year lease is available for $8,800 a month, and Panetteria’s is going for $5,500 a month with eleven years remaining.”
Last month, Grub Street reported that Iacopo Falai was drawing up “very preliminary” plans to open another spot on the Lower East Side’s restaurant row — at 77 Clinton Street.
Yesterday, an employee at Caffe Falai on Lafayette Street told the blog that nothing was final but that the Clinton Street restaurants “might close.” Grub Street hopes “the restaurateur is simply consolidating to a space that’s somewhere between his sit-down restaurant and the more casual panetteria, but we can’t say for sure at this point.”
Eater adds this tidbit: “At a dinner recently at Falai—which it should be added, is still excellent, if underpopulated—the chef was entertaining ideas of making his menu prix fixe only, a move that could a) counter diners who only come in to order pasta and b) add some new juice to the place. But perhaps it’s too late for that.”
Falai has been closed on Sundays and Mondays this summer.
