Veselka, an East Village mainstay since 1954, may soon have a twin: Owner Tom Birchard says he wants to open another full-scale restaurant. (Little Veselka, the Houston Street takeout kiosk, opened last year.) He’s looking at several downtown locations, the Avalon Christie complex on East Houston Street among them — the same building Daniel Boulud is thinking of dropping a new place into. But if Birchard had his druthers, he’d head uptown. “The ideal neighborhood would be the Upper West Side, around Columbia,” he tells us. “But I don’t want to be spending an hour going there and back every day. That would just be the most logical place, in terms of what’s there and who my customers would be.” Wherever he goes, the kasha king is sure of one thing: “I am going to re-create the Veselka we’ve had here for 53 years.” Well, sir, you can certainly try.
