Chef Michael White Set to Return to Midtown, Opens at The Atlantis

Celebrated chef Michael White, whose Michelin-starred Manhattan eateries “reinvented” Italian cuisine, is doubling down on his roots with a new restaurant set to open next year in a familiar Midtown NYC locale.

The busiest executive chef in the business is also scheduled to open a restaurant at the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami Beach this September, and is already off and running with Paranza, at the popular Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. 

The Hamptons resident, who says “never say never” about launching a signature trattoria on the East End, is currently in the thick of it, triangulating his attention on three new culinary ventures at once, including his much-anticipated return to Manhattan at the address of his once-famed Alto. 

The deal inked between White and landlord Tishman Speyer at the Midtown locale represents a bet on the revival of NYC’s midtown office sector, which, White says, is still reeling from COVID lockdowns and operating at only half-capacity.

Still, the internationally-acclaimed chef says he’s confident that the city’s office workers will make their way back sooner than later; that weekday lunch business will continue to tick upward; and that he’s learned more than a few tricks as the restaurant industry adapted on the fly through the pandemic. 

“Of course, COVID was not good to any of us, so restaurants that were [in Midtown] for years closed … we’re just looking forward to getting people back into the area,” says White, whose newest spot will be called Santi.

“Manhattan’s been good to me, it’s not going anywhere, there’s been some trials and tribulations over the years, but we’re doubling down on the idea that people will come back to the city. There’s a lot of great things happening in midtown and I’m happy to be part of it.”

White, who was preparing to take a deserved short break from restaurant operations with some family-time at his Hamptons home, said he’s “drinking from a firehose right now. It’s the fourth month for us with Paranza, things couldn’t be going any better and it’s been well-received. I’m very pleased with it.”

The Wisconsin-born chef says traveling the backroads in East Hampton has always reminded him of his home-state, and that he’s a big fan of Balsam Farms, as well as baked goods from Carissa’s, fish from Gosman’s, and flagels from Goldberg’s.

“I’m a King Kullen guy, too,” White says of the Bridgehampton supermarket that’s must-stop shopping in the Hamptons. “Listen, I see Eric Ripert there, I see Alex [Guarnaschelli] there, I see everyone there.”

He said opening a restaurant in the Hamptons is always in the back of his mind. “But I think if I opened something out there, I would just be full-on there and not relax at all, it wouldn’t be relaxing,” he says. “The customers would love it, though. Everyone who sees me says, ‘When are you opening up out here?’ It’s a tough market, location, seasonality.”

But, he said, “never say never” about doing a “simple trattoria” on the water out east. “I might do it someday,” he says. 

Overall, he says that that hospitality businesses that endured COVID, and made it through intact, have an advantage in the current market.

“You have to be smarter about it now, if you survived during COVID, you can do almost anything now because you’ve learned how to maximize and optimize things and a whole host of things in order to make it. There are good lessons that we’ve all learned.

We’re all rebuilding ourselves and there’s not one chef who’s not working harder than they ever have before. Things feel a lot better than they did a year and a half ago, I’ll tell you that.”