Kluger opened Loring Place in the fall of 2016.
Photo: Liz Barclay
After ten years of bringing all things Greenmarket a few blocks south to 8th Street, chef Dan Kluger will close his restaurant Loring Place next month. Kluger came up in the restaurants that defined this city’s farm-to-table fanaticism (Union Square Cafe, Tabla, ABC Kitchen) before opening his own spot. At Loring Place, Kluger tackled seasonality with an unrivaled exuberance — a “celebration of broccoli,” the annual return of sugar-snap salad, baked ricotta with kabocha — while never shunning crowd-pleasers like burgers and pizza. His goal for the restaurant, he says, was to offer something for everyone at a price that really allowed it to be a neighborhood spot but to still cook at the very highest level possible. Now, he says, the economics of the industry have thrown that delicate model completely out of balance.
How much more time do you have here?
Mid-July. We’re out at the end of the month.
How did you know now was the time to close?
Oh, financial. We really were in a position where we were not making money and burned through what we had set aside as a nest egg. It wouldn’t make any sense anymore to try and continue.
How has this neighborhood changed since you moved in? It’s been ten years.
Just under ten years. 8th Street Winecellar, across the street, is owned by two of my best friends, and they’ve been here now 19 years. And then the Marlton and Stumptown. There’s been a number of other restaurants and stores, but a lot of them have changed hands. When we came on, I think we started to bring a little bit more stability to the street, and for us, we attracted a great local guest — in terms of the everyday diner coming and having a burger or a salad and a pizza — and people that came and spent, you know, $500, $600, $700 on bottles of wine.
I think COVID completely changed the place. A lot of those people moved away. The restaurant scene has been growing fairly rapidly, and so the competition is that much greater. And all it really takes to break through is, you know, Where did Taylor Swift eat last night? Which is fine, but I think it means that nine-plus years in, we’re less exciting, and our neighborhood draw, while probably stronger than ever in a lot of respects, it’s just more of the neighborhood draw and not people coming from the Upper East Side or whatever to spend their money.
When you opened Loring Place, what was the food meant to be?
A cross between something for everybody — approachable, fun, flavorful — and a real representation of how I’ve been cooking for the past 30 years or so.
Can a “farm-to-table” restaurant really exist anymore?
I think it exists. I don’t think it’s talked about in the same way. We still try to focus on the relationships with the farmers we’ve had over the years, even though so many of the farmers that I grew up buying from — Rick Bishop, Franca Tantillo — aren’t at the market anymore. But we have our core group, and there are still plenty to shop from.
What’s been the big change with shopping that way?
It’s very expensive, and people, especially for a neighborhood restaurant, don’t necessarily understand the premise and the value behind it, right?
Could you open another restaurant like this now? Maybe that’s not fair to ask right now.
Could I? Would I? I think if I did, it would be way smaller, less homemade everything.
What do you make here that you shouldn’t make homemade?
It’s yogurt right now. The yogurt’s really good, but do you notice the difference? Is it worth it? We did everything when we started: We ground our own flour, made our own butter, made our own crème fraîche, our own jams. Anything you could possibly do, we did.
I think probably very few people really appreciate that level, which is not necessarily wrong. Maybe that’s on us — like, we didn’t do a good job storytelling. By the same token, I didn’t want the pretentiousness around it either because we wanted to just be a neighborhood fun restaurant. So I think you could do this restaurant elsewhere. Food-wise, concept-wise, I think it could certainly work. But in New York, the cost of doing business is so damn hard.
Where are you spending more on now than you did ten years ago? Is the cost of ingredients just so much higher, or has it all gone up from an operations perspective?
The cost of food’s definitely gone up. The cost of labor has gone up. But it’s everything. I mean, our ConEd is up 25 to 35 percent on what it was pre-COVID. Garbage is probably 20 percent or 25 percent up. Our liability insurance used to be, like, $60,000, and then, after COVID, it went up to $100,000.
How do you operate in a place where you need to charge $50 for an appetizer that once cost $20?
You don’t, which is why we’re closing, right? To give people the ability to come in and have a $24 pizza or a $20 appetizer — that kind of thing is gone. A restaurant down the block, they have completely different food, and they’re $150 or $200 per person. We both have insurance and garbage pickup, lawyers, and again, insurance, insurance, insurance. The model’s a little bit … I won’t say broken, but not in our favor.
How has the menu changed at Loring Place over the years?
We’ve certainly evolved in terms of simplifying the menu a little bit, but I think — and maybe that’s to our demise — I grew up in the business with Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern very much being my beacons. The menus change seasonally, but, like, you could always go to Gramercy and have that filet mignon and you could always go and have the spinach-and-portobello salad. While, yes, that can create stagnation, I can remember days of saying “I need that filet mignon” or “I need that spinach salad. Let’s go to the bar and have the spinach salad.” I wanted to create that same sort of thing.
What were your versions of the spinach salad and filet at Loring Place?
The broccoli, the burger, the grandma pizza, the calzone, the tuna. There are probably a few more. The beets have changed, but they’ve been like our spinach salad. Bringing back the sugar-snap-pea salad — it’s sugar snaps and radishes and Pecorino vinaigrette that’s a play on a cheesy Olive Garden black-pepper Parmesan dressing — every year, I can’t wait to have that salad again. I know that other people felt that way. I think there’s something really exciting about “I can’t wait. It’s that time.” I mean, when squash blossoms are coming back, people know it and are like, “Oh my God, is the pizza back on?” I think it’s exciting to create that following over a few dishes. It really feels like we did something right. As much as my team would be happy to create new things, they’re like, “Yeah, sugar-snap season! Gotta run the salad.”
Are you carrying on with vegetable-forward cooking uptown at Greywind?
I mean, yes and no. We changed the concept there to be a little bit more steakhouse-y, in that for entrées, you order your protein, and then the sides are meant to be that exploration into the vegetable side of the cuisine. I do feel like the — this sounds so corny — but the celebration of broccoli that we did here at Loring Place when we opened, it was about the broccoli, it was the star of the show, and all the other things were the accompanying elements. Just like a restaurant where you go to for a steak, the steak is the star of the show, we did that with broccoli here.
Are there special things you’re planning to do here in this space in your final six weeks?
So I’m doing something where one of the tables, the six-top outside the kitchen, I’m cooking for that table a couple nights a week — just everything from the “best of” to “I went to the market and picked up some stuff.” I’m excited to do that; it’s something I’ve wanted to do, but, you know, it’s never the right time, or we couldn’t get our act together. There’s always some drama. Finally, it was like, There’s no time like the present.
Not many chefs are still in the kitchen as much as you are ten years in. Are you still cooking on the line?
It sort of depends on the night and what’s needed. Some nights, I really try not to be in the kitchen so I can just spend time on the floor. Through this process of closing, everybody’s coming out of the woodwork. It really feels much more like the first year or two of opening, when we really were developing relationships. It’s so important to be out seeing people, and now it’s my opportunity to get back to that and say the thank-yous and all that kind of stuff.
Are there parts of Loring Place that you might want to use in a different place? Would you ever go full bore down the pizza route?
I would love to. What we created during COVID was Washington Squares, and I’ve always loved what we did with that. The concept was based off Jim Lahey’s Co., which I thought was the perfect restaurant. Five pizzas, three salads, not a lot of pomp and circumstance to it. I’d love to do something like that at some point — but not in New York.
What is the feeling like at Greywind in Hudson Yards?
It’s totally different. I mean, I would say if any good can come out of us closing here, my hope — and not for some financial reason, but for comfort and ego or whatever — my hope is that our regulars from here start going there.
Tell me about your regulars here.
It runs the gamut of, like, people that have been regulars since day one and new regulars. Someone came in the other day and I was like, “I cannot believe that your child is all grown up.” But it’s been ten years, right? They’ve been coming here since day one. I’ve created a lot of friends through these regulars. We’ve also lost a lot of our regulars, whether they’ve gotten married or had a kid or moved away — whatever the reason is. There are so many that, especially through this process of closing, so many that have reached out.
One of the rewards of building this is the regulars, right? We set out to create a restaurant that people would come to for their weeknight meal and then their celebratory meal, and we’ve done that, we’ve succeeded at that, which feels good. I’m sad that it’s come to an end.
