RESTAURANTS: L'Impero

Continuing our survey of Tudor City restaurants, today's subject is L'Impero, the enclave's first destination restaurant. Here is its story, in bullet points.

Chef Scott Conant and co-owner Chris Cannon. The Vespa
(permanently parked at the entrance) was meant to
lend some hip cred to the enterprise.

❋ Opens September 9, 2002 in the Prospect Tower restaurant space formerly home to The Terrace and Cinco de Mayo, among others. The Italian name translates as 'Empire.'

❋ The team behind L'Impero includes Scott Conant, a young chef who's part of a new wave of celebrity cooks shaking up the food scene in the early aughts.

❋ Conant serves an Italian-American fusion menu, whose signature dish is capretto, slow-roasted baby goat, paired with a sophisticated wine list curated by co-owner Chris Cannon.

❋ The interior (above), a slick melding of giant mirrors, soft lighting, white tablecloths and brown-and-slate-blue upholstery, is designed by Vicente Wolf, who wants it to be "a place where a woman would get dressed up to come." A shimmering white ceiling ‒ the result of six coats of car enamel ‒ is a standout feature.

❋ In December, 2002, NY Times food critic Eric Asimov gives it a gushing, three-star review, calling the spaghetti with sea urchin "powerfully oceanic, as pungent and sexy as a full breath of fresh sea air." As for the wine list, "L'Impero stands apart in a city full of overpriced, underthought wine lists, offering a fairly priced, well-conceived selection." The atmosphere is "calm, comfortable and adult" in keeping with Tudor City itself, "an almost eerily secluded enclave near the United Nations" providing a "welcome sense of dislocation from the rest of the city."

❋ The review makes the place a bona fide foodie destination. Soon, Conant and Cannon expand their empire with Bar Tonno, a downtown Italian raw-fish restaurant, and Alto, a Midtown Northern Italian. Then the partners have a falling out, and Conant leaves L'Impero in May, 2007, replaced by up-and-coming chef Michael White.

❋ It is decided that the five-year-old restaurant needs a makeover, and so L'Impero closes on June 29, 2008. It is reworked into Convivio, a more casual spot, and subject of a future post.