Popular Wash Heights French Eatery Closing But Reopening In Local Park

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — A popular French restaurant that's operated in Washington Heights for nearly a decade is closing its original location next month, but it is planning on reopening this summer in a local park.

The Pandering Pig, located at 209 Pinehurst Ave., will continue serving customers through March, before shuttering the storefront permanently, the restaurant announced on Facebook at the beginning of the year.

"Our lease ended at the end of December and we have made the decision not to renew," chef and owner Nicole O'Brien wrote on Facebook. "On the one hand, we made it!! When I opened The Pig, pretty much my entire universe of folks thought I was completely nuts and I was warned that I would probably fail within a year or two.

"Well, I didn’t, and we flourished," she added.

Given the uptown success, the forces behind the Pandering Pig have decided to move into a new location that is the shuttered New Leaf Restaurant in Fort Tryon Park at 1 Margaret Corbin Drive.

The new eatery will be called The Bonnefont, which is the name of the French town where one of the nearby Cloisters came from.

The restaurant will sit within a fieldstone cottage built in the 1930s for John D. Rockefeller and designed by Olmstead Brothers, the sons of legendary Central Park designer Frederick Olmstead.

There will be a lounge, dining area, a glass-enclosed conservatory, and a herb garden. There is no announced menu, yet.

"With a recently updated interior, The Bonnefont presents a distinctive vibe of modern cool and Old New York charm," reads a description on The Bonnefont's website.

The new restaurant is slated to open in June.