Pastry King Dominique Ansel Is Bringing Breakfast to Shake Shack West Village This Weekend

Dominique Ansel teams up with Shake Shack

Pastry purveyor Dominique Ansel Bakery, famed for its trademarked Cronut, is collaborating with Shake Shack on two new limited edition breakfast menu items: an egg katsu sando ($8) and a “morning maple latte” ($3). The sandwich will be served on the bakery’s milk bread, stuffed with a steamed egg breaded in panko and fried, with miso-honey mayo. The latte will be made with coffee from La Colombe and steamed maple milk and comes iced or hot. Both will be available on March 15 and 16 at the West Village location of Shake Shack at 225 Varick St. They’ll start selling at 8 a.m. and run until sold out. This isn’t the first time this duo has gone down. In 2013, chef Dominique Ansel brought the “Cronut hole” concrete to Shake Shack for one day.

Celebs hit Hudson Yards

Per Se’s Thomas Keller had a friends and family night at his new Hudson Yards restaurant Tak Room, and several stars were in attendance, including Martha Stewart, Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon, Arianna Huffington, and John McEnroe. The former Times food critic Frank Bruni was also there.

Openings, coming attractions, and closings

Trader Joe’s is “secretly” plotting a new massive location inside the Park Imperial condo building at Broadway and West 55th Street in Midtown, according to the Post. It’s apparently a secret because the company is trying to take competitor Whole Foods by surprise.

The second NYC outpost of Australian cafe Wattle Cafe opened at 152 Second Ave., between Ninth Street and 10th Street and serves breakfast and lunch foods like sandwiches and toasts. Signage also arrived nearby at 192 East Second St., between Avenue A and Avenue B for a new Mediterranean small plates restaurant called Plado. Fast-casual health foods spot Tender Greens is plotting a new location for 59 Bleecker in Noho.

Meanwhile, the Upper East Side location of old-school burger joint JG Melon is temporarily closed for renovations and is set to reopen at the end of the month. And Sunita Bar on the Lower East Side shuttered after 16 years in business.

Organization fights for the historic landmarking of recently sold White House Tavern

Nearly 140-year-old famed Greenwich Village literary hangout White Horse Tavern was recently sold to landlord Steve Croman, who has a reputation for tenant harassment and has served jail time and was forced to pay $8 million to former tenants in 2017. The restaurant is set to be run by Eytan Sugarman, but the community is wary of the change of hands. The Greenwich Village Historic Preservation has submitted documents asking the the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the interior of the restaurant an NYC landmark. The exterior has already been deemed so, but the organization argues that without protecting the inside, the original woodwork and fixtures could be altered or destroyed.