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Times Square’s NFT restaurant is still in the works, but in the meantime: we’ve got NFT Cronuts. The Cronut master himself, Dominique Ansel, is celebrating the hybrid croissant-donut’s nine-year anniversary with a 60-piece NFT collection, according to a representative. The collection, which goes live on Wednesday, May 4, at 9 a.m., resurrects five retired Cronut flavors — including strawberry and lemon verbena, and guava and orange blossom — in the form of digital art that people can buy on NFT marketplace OpenSea. The five Cronut flavors will also be available — to actually eat, in Cronut Hole form — at Ansel’s Soho bakery from May 13 to 15.
Chinatown’s Dim Sum Palace destroyed by fire
A gigantic blaze ripped through Dim Sum Palace in Manhattan’s Chinatown over the weekend, Gothamist reports. Six firefighters were injured while putting out the five-alarm fire, which lasted over six hours and spread throughout the four-story, mixed-use building. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to Gothamist, and four households were displaced. It is the second time in two weeks that the neighborhood has suffered a devastating fire.
P.F. Chang’s is coming to Union Square
EVGrieve reports that signage is up at 113 University Place, between East 12th and 13th streets, for what appears to be P.F Chang’s first sit-down restaurant in NYC. The national Chinese-American chain has opened multiple to-go outposts in the city during the pandemic, but this is a much larger undertaking: the nearly 5,000-square-foot restaurant unfolds over three floors, according to the local blog.
Manhattan pizza chain must repay 10 workers after illegally shorting them on wages
New York Attorney General Letitia James has ordered Gotham Pizza — a Manhattan pizza chain with locations in Yorkville, Chelsea, and the Upper East Side — to pay $175,000 to 10 workers who were cheated out of proper base wages, overtime, and tips from 2016 to 2019, AMNewYork reports. According to the attorney general’s investigation, Gotham Pizza workers were paid $6 to $10 per hour when they should have been paid $11 to $15 per hour, per the city’s minimum wage requirements; were not paid overtime after exceeding a 40-hour workweek; and were shorted on tips.
