The Pool Now Taking Reservations on OpenTable

OpenTable shows there are still reservations for opening night at The Pool, Major Food Group’s follow-up restaurant to The Grill in the Seagram Building — the most major debut of the year in NYC and beyond.

Diners can also snag reservations via email reservations@thepoolnewyork.com, but no matter how you make reservations, if you’re looking for seats in The Pool Lounge, the cocktail bar — with its own menu of raw bar items, raw fish and toasts — it should be noted as a request in the reservation.

To prepare for next week, that marble pool has been filled with the famous Calder mobile hanging over it. White linens dress the tables and friends and family service has begun. The kitchen is bustling, serving a dinner menu on which there is only one listing that includes meat: the surf and turf. Likewise, the only tableside preparation is the filleting of a whole fish. Meat and theatrics are reserved for The Grill. Dessert will be a big to-do with Stephanie Prida, former pastry chef of California’s Manresa, having moved from California to run the pastry program.

Back in the kitchen, Joe Cash (pictured) works under executive chef Rich Torrisi, in a section of the kitchen with a cooks’ line that’s separate from the one for The Grill. The floor, as the banner above shows, includes a demarkation with the embedded restaurant names.

In case staff needs reminding, there are quotations displayed behind plexiglass around the kitchen, such as this one adapted from General Patton, which reads: “An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of BS.”

There’s still a third restaurant to come after this debut, with The Lobster Club slated for the fall in the former brasserie space, with Tasuku Murakami as head chef. Stay tuned for more next week.

Gary He

Gary He