Will London’s Jeremy King expand his culinary empire to NYC?

Rachel Felder, author of Insider London sits down for an afternoon tea at The Delaunay with co-founder Jeremy King.

The delightful conversation covered the role of restaurants in customer's lives, the challenges that Brexit presents to restaurants in London, his admiration of Keith McNally and Danny Meyer, and we learned something we never knew before: that King tried to open NYC restaurants in several locations, which he listed in detail during the talk. It never happened for him in New York though, but "not through lack of trying," he told us. They looked at a number of spaces were unsuccessful in closing on any. (Skip to about the 12:45 mark for this part of the conversation.)

"I could point to the old Balduccis on I think there's one on 14th and 9th, which became CVS. Got beaten out of that ... Puck building on Houston. Beaten out of that by I think a mountain wear company ... Madison and 74th, it's too painful to go back. It built the ... I think it was called the LVH building, which is now an Apple store ... They only bid three times what we offered. For years we tried to ... I wanted the Scribner building on Fifth Avenue. There was a time when it finally come up...but we were paying about a hundred pound a square foot top, on Piccadilly. They were looking for 1,500 pounds a square foot. It's been difficult to get the price, but we still continue looking."

So will Jeremy King and partners be in NYC some day? We can only hope.