Venerable Brooklyn eatery Gage & Tollner may be emerging from restaurant limbo, returning its signature steaks and delicacies like fried clam bellies to the borough’s collective palate.
But its rumored reopening will be in name only.
Owner Joseph Chirico, who took over the restaurant in 1995, said it could soon make its return to Downtown Brooklyn, according to a published report.
“It broke my heart to shut it down,” he told the New York Post.
An institution at 372-374 Fulton Street for 112 years, Gage & Tollner closed in 2004. At the time, Chirico cited a lack of business.
He kept the naming rights, but sold the building.
A T.G.I. Friday’s opened at the site, but closed last year.
Chirico said that he hopes to open the new Gage & Tollner in two years time, according to the report.
The future of the 372-374 Fulton, a landmarked property, remains murky.
The Harlem soul food restaurant Amy Ruth’s signed a lease for the space, but that deal reportedly fell through.
Last week, signs hung outside the Fulton Street address, saying city marshals had seized the property on behalf of the landlord.
Robert Hebron IV, the realtor who negotiated the lease, was unavailable for comment at press time.
The Morningstar Restaurant Group, Amy Ruth’s owner, did not return a call for comment by press time.
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a business advocacy group which initially hailed the arrival of Amy Ruth’s, would not comment on the matter.
Robert Perris, the district manager of Community Board 2, which includes Downtown Brooklyn, was unmoved by the potential return of the restaurant.
“Gage & Tollner, is, in my mind at least, very specifically that builidng and that location,” he said.
