The Elizabeth Street Garden has been a favorite outdoor spot for so many people in Little Italy and Soho for nearly 200 years. On top of offering a respite from busy city life for the residents of Downtown Manhattan, the garden also offers rentals for video and photo shoots as well as weddings and private events.
But the garden may not be with us for much longer. The city has proposed the sale of this land to Haven Green (Pennrose Properties, Habitat NYC, and Riseboro) to make way for affordable housing, retail locations, and office space. The Garden states on their website that “the affordability is not permanent,” and that the residence can eventually “turn into market rate housing.”
The Elizabeth Street Garden has offered numerous alternative sites for affordable housing developments in an effort to save the community’s garden and green space, with these sites providing “more than 10x the amount of affordable units.”
To help save the garden, visit The Elizabeth Street Garden website today!
In this episode of Downtown Highlights, we visited BiCE Cucina, an authentic Italian restaurant that brings together hospitality and Northern Italian flavors. BiCE has two locations in New York City, Midtown and Soho. In this episode, we visited BiCE Cucina in Soho, their newest location.
BiCE Cucina Soho
The Story Behind BiCE
BiCE’s story starts about 90 years ago. It all started with Beatrice Ruggeri, also know as Bice. She shared her talent and love for food with her family and friends while growing up in Northern Italy. Impressed by Bice’s food, her friends and family encouraged her to open a restaurant, or “cucina”. She decided to listen to her loved ones and in 1926, she opened her own Trattoria in Milan with her husband, Gino.
Bice and Gino’s sons, Remo and Roberto, took over the business in 1970. They opened the first location in the United States in 1987. This restaurant is in Midtown, between 5th and Madison Avenue. BiCE quickly gained popularity around the world, opening locations in Palm Beach, Tokyo, LA, Paris, and Chicago over the span of three years. BiCE has even gained the attention of some major clientele such as the Kennedys. The legacy of BiCE continues on through Raffaele Ruggeri, Bice’s grandson.
Here, You’re Family
Raffaele’s goal for BiCE Cucina is clear: to make every guest feel welcome like they’re family. When you visit our restaurant “you’re coming into our home…and when you come into someone’s home, our home, you do everything you can to make sure you take care of your guests,” Raffaele Ruggeri explains to us. This goal is definitely being met, as we felt like we were home while eating here. As soon as we walked in the door, we felt welcome here by Ruggeri and the friendly staff.
Authentic and Light Cuisine
The Tuna Tartare
BiCE Cucina works hard to not only serve delicious food but food that is healthy and light. “We hope to create a beautiful restaurant where the food is really impeccable,” Ruggeri explains. BiCE Cucina has a wide variety of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options so everyone can find a dish that they love.
Everything that we tried at this restaurant was absolutely delectable. The food, including the pasta dishes, was incredibly light. In this episode, we tried three appetizers, the Tuna Tartare, Octopus Carpaccio, and Baked Eggplant Parmigiana, and two pasta dishes, the Tortellini and a gluten-free version of Tagliolini Aragosta. BiCE Cucina is not only a restaurant that serves delicious, healthy food, it is an experience. BiCE truly has something for everyone to enjoy. We will definitely be paying BiCE a visit again soon.
For more Downtown Highlights episodes, click here.
Welcome to Downtown Highlights, the series in which we take the opportunity to “highlight” businesses in NYC, like delicious chocolate and or gelato from Venchi. After the tumultuous and crazy year we’ve had, brick and mortar locations have taken a hit, and so it is important for us at Downtown to make sure that we’re serving the places that are serving us.
Venchi
This week, we have been transported to Italy via our New York, Venchi, an Italian gourmet chocolate shop. This place evokes a sensory experience, from homemade chocolate to refreshing authentic gelato. The sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feel of their shop are unlike any other. The best part? You don’t need a passport to enter this little slice of Italy.
We sat down with store manager Michele Sbarigia to get the scoop on Venchi’s story.
Venchi started in 1878 in Torrine, Italy. Their claim to fame is their nougatine, a decadent treat of caramelized hazelnut coated in 56% dark chocolate. Twenty years ago, Venchi incorporated gelato into their decadent repertoire.
One of the most stunning features at Venchi is that its ingredients are as authentic as it gets. They use all-natural ingredients, importing their specialized ingredients directly and exclusively from Italy. Hazelnuts come from Piedmont Italy. Pistachios come from Bronte, a small village in Sicily. Lemons come from Sorrento, a small village under Naples, and so on.
By staying true to the pillars of rich tradition and quality ingredients, Venchi remains as authentic as it gets in NYC.
2020 – 2021 lockdown will be remembered for years to come. Not only we will look back on the thousands, of hysterical funny videos, of entire families lip-syncing and dancing on
TicToK to Justin Bieber songs, watching our favorite celebrity’s cooking videos, self-shot in their own kitchens, to couples cutting and coloring their partner’s hair.
Did you ever think that you would let your other-half color or cut your hair?
The good news is that hair salons have re-opened and like me, many gladly masked and gloved up to venture back to see our favorite professional colorist, and stylist.
When I heard that one of our favorite make-up artists, and cosmetician with Sisley Paris, here in New York City was going to let her husband once again, color her hair, we stepped in!
When it comes to color, we must be careful, chemicals in hair coloring can damage your hair, especially if the color is not applied properly.
Our advice is to go to a professional salon, hair colorist, with professional-grade ingredients and application methods to ensure that your hair does not end up damaged, dry, or possibly even turning into a color you were not going for. Even worse, you could end up severely damaging your hair. If you want to become a platinum blonde without damaging your hair, then your hair colorist is the only one you should trust with your coloring and hair health. A professional colorist also has the knowledge and training to apply chemicals required, in the correct order to achieve the look you want.
Fekkai Soho New York City
At Downtown, we like giving give back to those who are there for us. Hence, our reason for stepping in before another husband completed his honey-do list. We gladly sent Marcia, one of our make-up artists, to the world-famous Fekkai Salon in Soho for color-correction after a long lockdown and home coloring.
Following the process, we asked the colorist Rae Ann Cotto a few questions:
Fekkai – Soho New York City
DTM: When did you start working in hair color?
RC: I started doing color 6 years ago. I got my job at Fekkai about a year after high school and spent time learning color theory and techniques before actually taking care of clients.
DTM: What inspired you?
RC: Since I was a child, I’ve been interested in all things beauty. Always wanting my hair done, playing with a red drugstore lipstick, I begged my mother to buy me. But it wasn’t until I was a teenager, with certain insecurities teens experience, that I decided to go to school to learn how to do the things that would teach me not only to appreciate my own beauty but to love it.
DTM: How do you know what color to color Marcia’s hair? It was stunning… really, beautiful great work Rae Ann!
RC: When it came to Marcia’s hair, I started with the basics looking at it, and asking her what she thought about her color, we both came to the same conclusion… it’s red. Too red. Using my knowledge of the color wheel, if I want to tone out red, I needed to use green. Also, knowing she wanted to lighten her roots, I opted for a neutral medium brown with green undertones. After bringing her to a solid more natural brown, I added some highlights around her face so she could feel nice and bright while keeping dimension in her beautiful thick hair!
Before – Marcia’s Color
DTM: With the COVID lockdown, have you experienced more botched DIY hair disasters coming in? a.) Is there ever a time when you cannot fix their hair?
RC: I was very surprised to not have a lot of corrections after returning to work! Even for me at the beginning working in color can be intimidating, and I think some people, really felt that at home. Doing corrections, the most important thing, and definitely the #1 rule for my work, is keeping the integrity of the hair. The only time a correction can’t be done is if it involves an excessive amount of potentially damaging elements like heat or bleach.
5. What is your favorite part of being a hair colorist?
RC: My favorite thing about being a colorist is I get to be the one to help people feel their best! I get to provide care and be apart of people’s self-care journey!
6. Any advice to give to our readers who may want to come in for color but are worried to leave their home during this pandemic?
RC: At Fekkai, we have a mission statement that starts with “Frederic Fekkai the leader in luxury clean hair care”, and that’s exactly what we are! We are clean, we are safe, and we do everything we can to make our clients feel that way too. For anyone that isn’t comfortable yet, you have nothing to fear, but whenever you’re ready, we’re here for you!
After Color with Rae Ann of Fekkai Soho
DTM: Anything you would like to share about your work?
RC: I am so in love with what I do. I’m passionate about what I do. Whether I wake up on a good day, or a not so good day, my passion and excitement never change. And it’s not just the hair, it’s every aspect of what I do; I love meeting new people, bonding with them, enhancing their beauty, and making them feel pampered, and then taken care of them for as long as they’re in my chair. I’m warm, bubbly, and welcoming, and I love having fun with everything I do. It’s so important to not only show this side through my work, but to have my clients experience the energy, feel it, and spread it too!
Rae Ann Cotto, Fekkai Soho New York City
We think that Rae Ann, has a very long career ahead of her, and we thank her for her excellent answers.
retail and residential neighborhoods in New York, the large, cast-iron buildings housed factories on the top floors that were used for light manufacturing of household items, lighting, textiles, and fashion accessories. Those goods were then sold in the ground floor retail spaces.
In the 1960’s manufacturing started to give way to artists, who moved into the gigantic lofts because of the tremendous light, and the minimal rents. Though much of SoHo is now more reminiscent of a large, open-air mall, there are still pockets on the outer edges that recall those early days. It is in one of those pockets that Michele Varian has her eponymous design shop.
“I started my business from my loft in SoHo,” says Varian. “I worked as a fashion designer so I wanted to do something that I could self-finance.” Since Varian had fashion experience she had an understanding of textiles and she started with a business that was primarily wholesale. “I started doing these installation-type pieces. I was helping a friend who was getting married in their loft so I made massive cutout scrims that looked like trees and enormous mobiles with transparent and frosted plexiglass discs that reflected the light. I sold those in my first store, but I was mainly doing wholesale business.” Then after September 11, she decided to buck the current trend and open a retail store on “sleepy Crosby Street.”
Image by Ryan Liu
“I was one of the first retailers on Crosby Street.
I made all of the pillows in the back of the shop, and I hired all of the seamstresses I had worked with in fashion.” Though she had a shop, Varian was mostly still selling her merchandise wholesale to stores like Barney’s, Nieman Marcus, and ABC Carpet & Home. Then the 2008 recession happened and things changed. “My showroom reps in Texas were doing tremendous business for me, and in the beginning of 2008 they abruptly shuttered. They had started to feel the pain from the recession before it happened here.”
In the meantime, ABC asked her to do a pop-up shop, and they placed her in a great location on the ground floor. “Up until 2008, wholesale carried the business, and I was a neighborhood store with regulars, a place where people stopped in to take a break. After 2008, my retail business took off, primarily because I have always had accessible as well as aspirational design. I never wanted to be one of those snobby SoHo shops where the staff glares at customers who don’t have enough money. We always had a neighborhood kind of vibe here.”
Curated Collection –
Michele Varian in her Howard Street shop (Above). Below, leather-clad mirrors and tableware by DBO Home, in front of wallpaper designed by Varian and printed by Chambord in Hoboken New Jersey.
Image by Ryan Liu
Today, Varian’s Howard Street shop features an extensive, and colorful pillow library in the basement. She also manufactures her own lighting line in the shop and has a line of wallpaper that she designs, which is manufactured in Hoboken, New Jersey. She just started working with Two Trees in Brooklyn to create a furniture line, and designs jewelry and objets d’art, as well.
The shop also holds a beautifully curated selection of items from other artisanal makers like Bloomist, and DBO Home, which is arranged through Guesst, a system of “pop shares” that she created with fellow Detroit native Jay Norris. The system allows existing retailers and small, artisanal brands to connect. “Even doing a pop-up can be wildly expensive for a small brand.
Image by Ryan Liu
We are hoping that Guesst will help brick-and-mortar stores to survive and still evolve with the changing times.” DT
Editor’s Note: Michele Varian has moved to 400 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217. At the present time, the physical store is closed due to COVID-19, however online ordering is available.
Get ready! Sunday, March 22nd marks the day for for the new Morrison Hotel Gallery’s Instagram Live series, which will stream directly from the homes and studios of some of the music industry’s most influential personalities. It is a special treat to learn the process of these artists in such an intimate setting. Mick Rock has already made an appearance, and tomorrow iconic photographer Danny Clinch will be live streaming from his home in NJ, beginning at 5 PM EST.
From the Morrison Hotel Gallery:
Offering fans unprecedented access inside the daily lives and legendary archives of the music industry’s most captivating personalities, Morrison Hotel Gallery’s Behind The Lens format expands its reach with the unveiling of a new Instagram Live/IGTV video series. Streaming directly from a featured photographer’s home or studio, each episode merges elements of storytelling, conversational Q&A and the cultivation of a global music culture in accordance with the evolving brand identity of Morrison Hotel Gallery, the international leader in fine art music photography.
Danny Clinch has established himself as one of the premier music photographers in the music world and spanning every genre, having shot and filmed everyone “from Johnny Cash to Tupac Shakur, from Bjork to Bruce Springsteen.”
Bruce Springsteen photographed by Danny Clinch
Starting his career as an intern for Annie Leibovitz, Clinch’s work has appeared on hundreds of album covers and in publications like Vanity Fair, Spin, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and more. His music videos have garnered three Grammy nominations, having directed for artists like Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews.
The Morrison Hotel Gallery originated in SoHo seventeen years ago, boasting a 1400 square foot photo gallery devoted to music. Exhibitions of fine art photography span the iconic to the esoteric, featuring guests such as Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, and Tony Bennett. Now they bring the space to your devices by offering fans unprecedented access inside the daily lives and archives of some of the music industry’s most captivating personalities, the Morrison Hotel Gallery’s Behind The Lens conglomerate expands its reach with the unveiling of a new Instagram Live series.
