Displaced UES French Restaurant Quatorze Bis To Reopen

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A popular Upper East Side French restaurant that was forced to close its doors when its building was targeted for sale and demolition has found a new home in the neighborhood.

Quatorze Bis will open this summer at 1587 First Ave. on the corner of East 82nd Street, according to its website. The space was previously home to Austrian restaurant Grunauer Bistro and Italian restaurant Primavera before it. Quatorze Bis has not revealed a target date for its opening.

Longtime owners of Quatorze Bis told Eater New York, which first reported the restaurant's reopening, that not much will change at the new location. The menu and decor will be replicated and many of the original restaurant's staff will make the move to First Avenue.

Quatorze Bis was forced to close in 2018 because its East 79th Street building is set to be demolished and redeveloped. Developer Spruce Capital Partners filed applications with the city Department of Buildings in January to raze the building and replace it with a 17-story development.

The new development will rise 214-feet-tall and contain just 15 apartment units, according to building plans. An average unit will be about 2081 square feet large and occupy an entire building floor, indicating the development will be a luxury residential building. Planned amenities include tenant storage rooms, a fitness center, bicycle parking and a rooftop terrace.

Spruce Capital Partners bought the development site in 2017 for $12.75 million, according to public real estate records. The previous owner of the building was the First Hungarian Literary Society of the City of New York. The developers own the lot under an LLC called SR 79 LLC.