Well…you folks might remember us reporting that Boe@324 tanked — the spot with a really annoying website and a freestanding structure on Central Avenue? (The website, still up, forces you to wait as a slow, slow, slow set of curtains parts to reveal the restaurant’s site—and sometimes the curtains don’t part. Check it out—it’s maddening.) When Boe@324 vacated, the move detonated one of those not-uncommon restaurant explosions, the kind that leave unemployed waiters, debts, lawyers, and other food world shrapnel scattered all over Central Avenue.
Here’s the scoop. Once upon a time there was a restaurant in New Haven called
Ibiza, with two chefs named Luis Bolla and Ignacio Blanco (Blanco was also an owner). By all reports, this was a great Spanish restaurant, earning praise even from the New York Times’s Mark Bittman, who said that he’s “never eaten better Spanish food in the US.” Heady praise from the man tooling around Spain with Mario Batali and Gwinnie on PBS’s dime, not that we’re pea green with envy. Anyway, the success of N.H.’s Ibiza spawned Meigas in Norwalk, and then the group decided to venture to Westchester–opening another Ibizain Boe@324’s space. By the way, this all happened precisely during the weeks when the markets were crashing and lenders were freezing loans, not that we know there’s a link.
Ibiza White Plains was open for exactly six days, Monday through Saturday, and then something happened…something that no one is talking about. The result is that Ibiza White Plains closed down, Meigas in Norwalk was sold off to Carlos Hernandez (with former Ibiza chef Luis Bollo is planning to do some work for the under-new-ownership Meigas), while Ignazio Blanco is still in New Haven. The New Haven spot was closed for lunch when we called, though its posted hours lead us to believe they should be open. So who knows what’s going on there?
And finally, the Boe/Ibiza spot was snapped up by a Westchester chef, John Gervasi, who headed up the kitchen at White Plains landmark Italian Mulino’s for 18 years, from the late ‘Eighties until the new millennium. The new spot, Gervasi’s, will serve Italian specialties and Italian seafood—and while its website is still under construction, Gervasi’s number is (914) 684-8855. By the way, it’s the same doomed number for Boe@325 and Ibiza. Personally, I’d get a new number: there might be some bad juju clinging to it.
