It's hard to know quite where to begin when discussing URBO, a massive new bar-restaurant-retail operation opening this week just off Times Square. Should we start with the name: a combination of the words "urban" and "bohemian?" The price: $29 million to build two restaurants, a bar, a coffee shop and a retail store inside 26,000 square feet? Or the notion that anyone would voluntarily drop $145 on a tasting menu with a view that essentially looks over Port Authority? Then again, people voluntarily live next to a poop river.
The individual conceits inside the complex aren't very different from the kind of PR spiels we get on a daily basis. "Artisanally sourced, locally influenced" and "recycled and reclaimed woods" are all boasted about alongside "Blue Bottle Coffee" and "artisan food products." It all sounds pretty routine—Is Times Square The New Brooklyn? one click bait-y headline could easily ask. Even the guffaw-inducing Captain Planet-esque menu conceit at the first floor restaurant—dubbed URBO Kitchens—isn't the only restaurant to employ a similar concept. To wit, the three open kitchens inside will each represent different cooking and food styles; Fire (grilled), Water (poached/steamed) and Earth (fresh fruit and vegetables). Heart and Wind tie-ins expected as soon as they can wrangle that damn monkey.
A second restaurant (URBO Loft) on the next floor—accessible by either spiral staircase or glass elevator—serves "high-end, market driven, and hyper-seasonal" fare in a setting "reminiscent of a city rooftop garden." There's also a lounge area (Bar URBO—sensing a theme?) on the second floor, serving cocktails from Dutch Kills's head bartender, naturally, plus two greenhouses and private events spaces. Back downstairs, the aforementioned Blue Bottle Coffe at URBO Grind plus a retail shop selling food products plus three wooden carts vending hot and cold foods. Oh and there's a life-sized water tower inside, too!
Dropped jaws and eye rolls aside, maybe this is the perfect place for this type of culinary big top. Last week, Russian restaurant magnate and owner of URBO lamented to the Times that there's "very little in the way of good food" in Times Square. There are New Yorkers who spend a lot of time there, after all! The same could have been said for the Battery Park City area until recent years—leave it to Danny Meyer to be an early adopter—and the area just received a similar monstrosity with the opening of Hudson Eats and the forthcoming high end restaurants slated to debut this year. Likewise the far reaches of Hell's Kitchen, which were critically underserved until Gotham West Market planted its roots to serve the new luxury towers being built.
Either way, the tourists will love it.
