Brunch in New York

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The Flatiron Pan-Asian has been catering to a largely European nightlife crowd since its opening in 2009. While its well-heeled clientele has paid the rent on the sprawling space, Pranna has not quite generated the necessary buzz to land on every New Yorker’s must list. Pranna aims to expand its base with a Saturday brunch party, and in late May hosted a press brunch to help get the word out. Given that the event had been planned for weeks, there is no explanation – and no excuse – for the mind-bogglingly slow service and staff disorganization at the brunch.

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Casa Lever, the restaurant, is on Park Avenue at 53^rd Street, within the landmarked Lever House, New York City’s first curtain-wall skyscraper, later imitated in Paris and Berlin.  A gracious Isamu Noguchi sculpture garden is situated within the Lever House courtyard.  The restaurant interior, meanwhile, beckons with opulent, 1960s retro-chic.  Andy Warhol prints of Dennis Hopper, Giorgio Armani, Jerry Hall, Sly Stallone and Alfred Hitchcock enliven the space. Before Casa Lever even officially opened, Madonna threw a party in it for her friend Penelope Cruz. You can picture Warhol himself, nonchalantly sitting in one of the parallelogram-framed booths, looking out and up at a Venini glass chandelier to quip “I was just joshing about those fifteen minutes.” Read the rest of this entry »