Usually, when a restaurant announces that it’s closing for dinner service, whitewashed windows and snarky obits aren’t far off. But there’s reason to think that Dani, which we’ve learned will be closing at 6 p.m. between now and Labor Day, might not be in such dire straits.
For one thing, New York Magazine is moving to the restaurant’s Hudson Square neighborhood at the end of August, and we plan on eating more than our share of salumi and bucatini con sarde. (Viacom and an eight-story boutique hotel are also coming to the area.) More important, though, we believe chef-owner Don Pintabona’s claim that he’s doing it because, what with the month being so slow anyway, he’s better off concentrating on other stuff. “I’ve got parties booked in here, I’ve got television projects, and I have to close for a week anyway to put in a new acoustic ceiling, because it gets pretty brutal here on Saturday nights in terms of loudness,” he tells us. Still, it would be just our luck to have Dani go under just before our voracious appetite for their pork cutlets could rescue it.
