SOHO — Fifth time's a charm?
Sullivan Street bakery and cafe One Upon A Tart finally managed to win over Community Board 2 in its bid to for a license to serve wine and beer — at what board members tallied to be its fifth attempt.
Owner Michael Stern showed up to a July CB 2 State Liquor Authority committee meeting with his wife of ten years, Alicia Walter. Stern told the board he had signed over complete ownership of the business to her. He has previously said the business will fail if it cannot get a beer and wine license.
Walter is an acclaimed chef who has taught hundreds of cooking classes all over the city, was recently a chef-in-residence at the James Beard House in Greenwich Village and spent several years at Eataly.
Walter promised to close at 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends, limit live music performances to before 10:30 p.m. one or two nights a week, never have outdoor seating and never use the interior hallway that connects the two sides of her restaurant but leads to the residential units above it, which has been a major point of contention at all of Stern's previous attempts.
"I have no intention of ever walking in the hallway again," Walter told the board. She said the doors have been taped over, and Stern, who is an architect, even offered to brick them up, if he gets the landlord's permission.
Walter made it clear to the board that her years of experience mean she can be trusted to run a respectful and successful business, and outlined her ambitions for the Tart, including a "strong plan for providing food wholesale to businesses all over lower Manhattan."
When the committee members seemed to balk at first at the idea of her supplying food to the kitchenless space by carrying it outside from door-to-door to avoid using the controversial interior stairwell, she described it as "essentially... providing wholesale to ourselves."
The board ultimately agreed to her plan, making the method she specified one of the conditions of their approval.
She also promised to never seek a beer and wine license for the northern side of the restaurant or an upgrade to a liquor license.
Walter backed up Stern's assertion that they need the license, and explained to the board that she'd reviewed the Tart's profit and loss margins for the last few months "and they were pretty bleak."
One Sullivan Street resident, who said he's "lived on the block for 30 years," came to the meeting to lobby for Stern and Walter.
"These are not bar people — you know, like Navy or The Dutch or Raoul's or something like that," said the resident, Kenny Ross, referencing to other local restaurants. "If you get to know them, they're interesting people."
"They're creative people," he added. "They're artists, like the people who used to come to Sullivan Street and open up businesses."
Ross said he's dropped in on some of the music nights "and it's nothing but interesting music that you haven't heard before."
Ultimately, Ross said, he wants to be able to go to the Tart for a drink because he prefers it to other neighborhood options.
"I can't afford the Dutch," he said. "And I don't want to go to Navy."
