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By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
The owner of Reserve Cut Kosher Steakhouse has purchased the site of its longtime home in Manhattan’s Financial District. As reported by Crain’s NY, the price paid for the FIDI space was $18 million, per city records.
The high-end Glatt Kosher eatery is located near the New York Stock Exchange, and has capacity for 200 seats. Reserve Cut is one of the largest Kosher steakhouses in the Big Apple. Located at 40 Broad St, it is owned by Albert Allaham, who opened it in 2013, when he was just 29. Allaham emigrated with his family to Brooklyn from Damascus, Syria over a decade earlier in the 1990s.
Allaham, together with Midtown Equities, purchased the three retail condo units in the Setai building from Zev Marmurstein using the limited liability company named AL 40 Broad Realty, according to a deed added to the city register this week. Allaham obtained a $11.7 million loan from Webster Bank with which to purchased the property, records show. Per Crain’s, it is not known how much the restaurant had been paying to rent the restaurant space. It is also not clear if the roughly 38,000 square feet of space purchased signals that there may be plans to expand the restaurant. Allaham and Midtown Equities did not reply to Crain’s request for comment.
Reserve Cut currently offers four private rooms for hosting events. The restaurant is famed for its Wagyu beef and filet mignon, as well for its sushi and kosher wines. “Being kosher at home and being Orthodox, every Friday and Saturday we have meat,” Allaham explained. “Saturday night, no one wants meat again. I wanted to give them another option.” That’s why the restaurant had started serving sushi and Dover Sole.
Allaham also owns a high-end kosher butcher shop in Brooklyn, named the Prime Cut. Per the restaurant’s website, Allaham’s family had managed one of the most respected butcher shops in Syria nearly two centuries ago. So, the current meat store and steakhouse are Allaham’s natural way of carrying on his family’s legacy. Allaham had previously said that he is proud to offer a high-end Kosher steakhouse in the Financial District, which Jews can be proud to take non-Jewish business associates to as well. “Before Reserve Cut, a group of 10 businesspeople with one who’s kosher would go to a nonkosher restaurant,” Allaham told Crain’s. “Now they come in here, and then they want to come back again for a date.”
Owning the butcher shop and the restaurant, Allaham had to battle the infamously low supply of wagyu beef, a Japanese breed prized for its marbled texture. To remedy this, some six years ago he launched a ranch in Iowa to raise the meat he needs for both businesses.
The owner also set up his own aging room, and boasts that his American-raised wagyu rib eyes have been aged for 36 days. His efforts seem to have paid off and helped set his eatery apart. In a 2018 interview with Crain’s, Allaham had told the publication that he was in line to gross over $10 million that year.
