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Danny Brown Loses Its Michelin Star After 5 Years

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | October 5, 2015 3:55pm | Updated on October 6, 2015 6:20pm
 Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen in Forest Hills lost its Michelin star for the 2016 Michelin Guide.
Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen in Forest Hills lost its Michelin star for the 2016 Michelin Guide.
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DNAinfo/Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska

QUEENS — More bad news for Danny Brown Wine Bar and Kitchen.

The beloved Forest Hills eatery, which recently announced that it will be closing by the end of the year because it was not able to renew its lease at 104-02 Metropolitan Ave., has not been awarded a coveted star in the Michelin Guide New York City 2016.

Danny Brown, which got its first star in 2011, has received the award every year since. Until last year it was the only eatery in Queens to receive that honor.

“At the time of review we were extremely disappointed to remove the star here as it was our first star ever awarded in Queens but did so because the cooking was not consistently at the one star level,” Lauren Davis, a spokeswoman for Michelin said in an email.

Davis said that Michelin was not aware of that fact that the restaurant was set to close before the guide went to print.

The restaurant, which opened nearly 10 years ago and has served an eclectic mix of Spanish and French cuisines, downplayed the news.

“It is a 2016 guide book and our restaurant will not be open in 2016,” one of the owners, Audrey Brown, said in an email.

Only two Queens restaurants received the stars in the 2016 guide — Mexican eatery Casa Enrique and M. Wells Steakhouse, both in Long Island City.

Chef Danny Brown said in a phone interview last month that for the remaining three months the restaurant will be serving a new smaller menu offering contemporary French cuisine instead of its regular dishes. The new menu will also change every month until closing, Brown said.

He also said that he is currently working on finding a new space for the restaurant.