Alder applies for a sidewalk cafe on Second Avenue

[Late March via @davidsokol]

Also on the June CB3/SLA docket: a sidewalk cafe license for Alder, the popular new restaurant from noted LES chef Wylie Dufresne. The restaurant opened on Second Avenue near East 10th Street in late March. CB3 approved the liquor license for Alder last August.

We'll have more on the rest of the CB3/SLA docket later.

This is the line to get into Wylie Dufresne's new restaurant Alder on Saturday

As you may have heard, noted LES chef Wylie Dufresne opened a new restaurant last Thursday called Alder on Second Avenue near East 10th Street.

Apparently it is popular.

@davidsokol passed along the above photo late Saturday afternoon... showing a line forming before the doors opened at 6. (Per the Alder website, the 56-seat restaurant does not accept reservations.)

In an opening preview last week in the Times, Florence Fabricant noted that Alder, "a complement to WD-50," serves "inventive twists on classics."

Such as!

The rye pasta includes pastrami, so with mustard sauce and pickles you have a homage to the pastrami on rye at the Second Avenue Deli, which used to be across the street.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Wylie Dufresne bringing fancy cocktails for foodies

Here's more about Alder, the new pub opening on Second Avenue from Wylie Dufresne

As you may know, noted LES chef Wylie Dufresne is opening a 50-seat pub that will serve "modern casual food and well-crafted cocktails," as Grub Street first noted last fall ... it will be at the former Plum Pizzeria at 157 Second Avenue near East 10th Street.

The New York Times today has more details on the menu and stuff.

[Mr. Dufresne] will specialize in what some might think of as a cubist spin on pub grub. There will be “stuff you can kind of graze and nibble,” as Mr. Dufresne put it: pigs in a blanket, clam chowder, Caesar salad, chicken liver toast, oxtail stew, calamari, pub cheese.

But in keeping with the chef’s style, each dish will be twisted into a surprising manifestation. That Caesar salad won’t come in a bowl; it will arrive as finger food, transformed into bite-size pieces of nigiri, with a sliver of charred, Parmesan-dusted Spanish mackerel resting on a rib of romaine lettuce and a dab of eggy sauce.

And, the Times notes, "no dish at Alder will cost more than $25."

Also!

Mr. Dufresne, 42, has family roots in Rhode Island, but he spent his adolescent years near where Alder will open. “The East Village is where I cut my teeth as a kid,” he said. “I ran around here on a skateboard.”

Previously on EV Grieve:
Wylie Dufresne bringing fancy cocktails for foodies (29 comments)