UPPER WEST SIDE — The brothers behind the Blue Ribbon restaurant chain have teamed up with the owner of P.J. Clarke's to take over the site of a shuttered Italian eatery on West 72nd Street.
The 26-year-old family-owned restaurant Sambuca closed late last year after unsuccessfully trying to revamp itself by offering brunch and a snazzier wine bar.
Brothers Eric and Bruce Bromberg of the Blue Ribbon Restaurant Group and Ken Sturm, owner of the Iridium Jazz Club, P.J. Clarke's and Ellen's Stardust Diner, formed a partnership to buy the 15-year-lease on the West 72nd Street space, said broker Rafe Evans of Walker Malloy & Company, who brokered the deal.
Monthly rent for the space will be $33,000, said Evans, who could not reveal other details of the deal. He noted the rent was well below what the 7,100-square-foot space, which sits across from the Dakota, could fetch.
"We’re expecting great things from a very sophisticated and impossible-to-duplicate location since that is a non-commercial block," he said.
Neither the Brombergs nor Sturm could be reached for comment.
