Oren Simon Backs Out on Buying Lease for Ed Brown's Eightyone

        New York’s brasserie king, Oren Simon, will not open an Italian restaurant in Ed Brown’s Eightyone space as rumored. The deal was close to signing, Brown says, when Simon’s architect objected to the Certificate of Occupancy. "I take zero risk when I don’t have to,” Brown says Simon told him. And with that ended Brown’s hope of recovering some of his losses at 45 West 81st Street, where his $4.5 million dream died in the fallout of the battered economy.

        Oren, an Israeli, came to New York in the late 1980s and launched his career with Brothers Bar-B-Que. He is also a co-owner of Japanese-Peruvian Sushi Sambas, and the Mediterranean Barbounia.  

        Simon partnered with Andrew Silverman to open L’Express on Park Avenue South, before going Francophilic with a series of brasseries that now form his Tour de France Group: Café D’Alsace, Nice Matin, Marseille, Pigalle, Le Monde, French Roast, Maison, L’Express. The Upper West Side venture would have been his first attempt at la cucina.

        Earlier Brown and his lawyer had negotiated for months with Alan Rosen of Juniors for a restaurant with Laurent Tourondel. “The papers were ready to sign when I got an email from Rosen saying he couldn’t settle his partnership with Laurent so the deal is off.  He didn’t even call. He sent an email.”

        Brown says the landlord gave him the right to find a qualified tenant and sell the lease for a limited time. “And that time is up,” he told me today. “It was a fair deal.”  He was moved that all his investors stood by him even at the end when nothing he did to lower prices could save Eightyone. “Some of them took a big hit.”

        A few minutes after we spoke, he learned the landlord would not permit him to remove any of his property from the space, not even equipment he leased or still owes money on. Brown had already joined with Jeffrey Chodorow at Ed’s Chowder House and recently he was hired by Restaurant Associates as Senior Vice President of Food and Beverage.

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