Famous Chef Todd English Signs Lease at 15 Park Row at City Hall

By: Dean Weiner

Celebrity chef Todd English will soon bring new life to a heavily trafficked but long-dark FiDi corner. A huge eatery under the English banner has signed a lease for 20,000 square feet on two levels at 15 Park Row across from City Hall Park, downtown sources revealed. The site is at the block’s south end, which has been vacant since J&R Music World shut down in 2013, reports Steve Cuozzo of The New York Post.

The New York Post reports that a search of “brokerage web pages turned up an offering for the 15 Park Row space by a Meridian Retail Leasing team of James Famularo, Ben Biberaj and Elliott Wygoda. The listing did not cite an asking rent, but our on-the-ground neighborhood source said it was $2.5 million a year. Meridian president Famularo declined to comment.

English was born in Amarillo, Texas, according to his Wikipedia page, and grew up in Sandy Springs,

Georgia and later Branford, Connecticut. He matriculated at Guilford College in North Carolina on a baseball scholarship, but quit and entered the Culinary Institute of America in 1978 and graduated in 1982. He worked under Jean-Jacques Rachou at New York’s La Cote Basque, and then moved to Italy to work at several restaurants there.

He returned to the United States at age 25 and served as the executive chef of the Italian restaurant Michela’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts for three years before opening the original Olives restaurant in 1989.

English’s own website states, “In the spring of 1991, Chef Todd English caught the culinary world’s eye when the James Beard Foundation named him their National Rising Star Chef.  Chef English followed through on that promise, as the James Beard Foundation subsequently named him Best Chef in the Northeast in 1994.  Nation’s Restaurant News named Chef English one of their Top 50 Tastemakers in 1999. In 2001, Chef English was awarded Bon Appetit’s Restaurateur of the Year award and was named one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People.  Todd also has been named to the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who in Food and Beverage in America.

Besides being a creative chef, successful business person, and celebrated celebrity, English is always a generous philanthropist. English’s website describes his charitity as very involved with several local and national foundations,  including Susan G. Komen, Big Brother, the Anthony Spinazzola Foundation, Community Servings, Share Our Strength, Boys and Girls Clubs, Volunteers of America, Food Bank of NYC, Make a Wish, Autism Speaks, City Harvest, Keep Memory Alive, Family Reach, Men with Heart, YMCA, NECAT, American Red Cross, Maureen’s Haven Shelters, and Bakes for Breast Cancer where he is a honorary board member.  Most recently, Todd formed The Wendy English Breast Cancer Research Foundation in honor of his sister.