Jin Sushi, home of one of the Lower East Side’s best happy hour deals, will be fading into the sunset in the weeks ahead. As documents filed with Community Board 3 indicate, a new concept is taking shape at 252 Broome St. Chef Matty Bennett (formerly of the Fat Radish) and Rupert Noffs are getting ready to open the Lucky Bee in this mid-block spot between Ludlow and Orchard streets.
They went into some detail about the restaurant this past spring in the Sydney Morning Herald (Bennett and Noffs are Aussie ex pats). An excerpt:
Bennett will be the culinary force behind the pair’s ambitious upcoming project, The Lucky Bee, a restaurant with art and design spaces and charity initiatives set to open in Manhattan later this year. “There’s nothing like it in Manhattan,” Noffs says. “It’s a farm-to-table mix of Fat Radish and Longrain (the Sydney-based restaurant in which Bennett was once sous chef). We’ll raise money for bee farms, sell organic produce and provide space for designers and artists, as well as training up street kids and tying in with the Noffs Foundation.” Adds Bennett: “We’ll be bringing the Aussie food philosophy to New York; street style, seasonal, sustainable Asian food. I call it grass fed, grass roots, grass guts.” … The Lucky Bee will sell NYC-produced honey from rooftop hives – “every suburb has a distinct taste,” Bennett says – and support bee farming.
Noffs is the grandson of the Australian philanthropist Ted Noffs. They’ll be going for a full bar at 252 Broome St. Jin Restaurant opened in 2006. When we stopped by last week, owner Judy Wu said she planned to stay open until everything’s squared away between the new tenant and the building owners. The property is controlled by Michael Forrest and Samy Mahfar’s SMA Equities.
