Ah, the pitfalls of opening a temporary restaurant. What if your liquor license falls through? That's the situation that chef John Fraser's pop-up restaurant What Happens When is currently facing. The pop-up, which took over the old Le Jardin space downtown in January, is only supposed to run for nine months before it goes away but a recent blow from the State Liquor Authority could hurry along the process. Eater reports that Fraser and co.'s request to transfer the La Jardin liquor license has been rejected by the SLA. What this means in the long term is unclear, but while the Cleveland Place restaurant tries to reason with the Liquor Authority it remains open, just with none of its tasty cocktails and no BYO either.
The SLA explained their reasoning in a letter to the restaurant [PDF] as threefold: The La Jardin licensee did not sign What Happens When's renewal application, the former restaurant handed over its license to "persons not approved by the Authority," and finally alterations were made to the restaurant's bar without telling the SLA first. Specifically, "the 12 foot bar shown in the diagram submitted with the original license application by Mr. Katz had been removed and replaced with a small portable bar. There were bottles of alcohol on the portable bar." They replaced a huge bar with a portable one! Making a bar smaller and easier to get around is a problem?
The well reviewed restaurant is in the process of appealing and while they wait they've moved the restaurant's scheduled Omnivore dinners, which were supposed to start next week, to Fraser's Upper West Side restaurant, Dovetail.
