Le Cirque Files for Bankruptcy
First The Four Seasons, and now this. One of New York City's most established restaurants, Le Cirque, is in trouble.
On Friday, the venerable restaurant filed for filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (Business Insider was the first to report the sad news.) Mauro Maccioni, one of three sons of Le Cirque founder and fixture Sirio Maccioni, said in a statement, "We are not saying au revoir! Chapter 11 gives us time to reorganize and STAY OPEN."
The restaurant owes between $500,000 to $1 million to more than 100 creditors, according to its Chapter 11 form.
Sirio Maccioni family opened the first iteration of Le Cirque in Manhattan’s Mayfair Hotel in 1974-Daniel Boulud was executive chef there from 1986 to 1992. In 1997, the restaurant moved to the Palace Hotel with the name Le Cirque 2000. It moved to its current location in the Bloomberg Tower at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue in 2006.
Le Cirque's chefs, who have included David Bouley and Terrance Brennan in addition to Boulud, are credited with inventing the crème brûlée and spaghetti primavera, according to Business Insider. The restaurant has hosted celebrities, politicians, financiers, the pope, and-on one occasion-two American presidents at the same time (Reagan and Nixon, who were dining together).
The news comes on the heels of the shuttering of another Midtown dining establishment, The Four Seasons, last year. (That restaurant is planning to reopen in a nearby location, and a new management team from Major Food Group is taking over the former Four Seasons space for a venture called The Landmarks Rooms at the Seagram Building.)
According to the New York Post, the Maccioni family is planning a party to celebrate Sirio’s 85th birthday and Mauro’s 45th on April 18, with Boulud scheduled to cook.
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