BLT Chef Laurent Tourondel Plans a Casual Italian Hotel Restaurant in the Garment District

BLT chef Laurent Tourondel has a new project underway, reports Gael Greene. He's working on a casual pizza and pasta restaurant with a wood-oven for the Eventi Hotel at 30th Street and 6th Avenue. There's no name for the restaurant (which just happens to be a short walk from another little hotel-based wood-oven pizza place called Marta) just yet, but when it opens, it will also provide the hotel's catering and room service.

While Tourondel focuses his attentions there, his partners at the middle-aged meat market restaurant Arlington Club have made some changes now that he's out of the kitchen. Richard Wolf says they are "dropping sushi no one wanted, cutting down salads, adding hot appetizers and adopting smaller popovers," since apparently no one was finishing Tourondel's giant cheesy popovers.