Bar Basque is out of Eventi. Jimmy Haber’s ESquared Hospitality is in.

          Bar Basque is out of the Eventi Hotel April 29^th and Jimmy Haber’s Esquared Hospitality will take over May l. No one was confirming the information that was making rounds over the weekend, but Eventi, a Kimpton Hotel, has been shopping its food service deal around for a while, according to a source that did not want to be identified.

           The hotel on Sixth between 29th^th and 30^th Streets, has been unhappy with its existing partner, Jeffrey Chodorow’s China Grill Management. Chodorow had delivered the all white futuristic FoodParc on the ground floor in October, 2010, and a few weeks later, its stylish and flashy Bar Basque on the second floor, a scarlet homage to Spanish cooking. It also signed on to handle catering and room service.  The hotel also wanted to reconfigure the lobby, the source said. That meant taking over the FoodParc space. 

          Chodorow had serious ambition for Bar Basque as a spillover of the Spanish food revolution, assigning it to his marketing right hand, Terry Zarikian, a passionate devotee of Ferran Adria and the Basque revolutionaries. Star chefs from abroad rotated through as guest toques. But resident chef Yuhi Fujinaga wowed too as I wrote in my Seeing Red at Bar Basque, Octoboer 2010.

          The lively young bar crowd never did quite mesh with the gourmand aspiration on the dining terrace.  And serious eaters, me included, complained about the monster television screen across the courtyard intruding in our great mackeral moments.  But I went back often for Fujinaga’s exciting dishes and to catch up with the visiting chefs, whose opening nights were, confession here, usually dedicated to Citymeals-on-Wheels.

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