Queensyard bolted out of the gate at Hudson Yards with breakaway speed and stiff-upper-lip resolve. Just 3 weeks old, the modern British-American restaurant offers something for everyone, from an affordable Dover sole fillet to an eye-popping Vessel view.
Chef Danila Bogdan’s sprawling, beautiful place from London-based D&D Group had to shrug off opening under a cloud: the disastrous launch a few months earlier of a similar-seeming D&D restaurant, Bluebird, at Time Warner Center. The poor bird suffered the worst reviews in any realm of human endeavor since Broadway’s belly-laughs awful “Moose Murders” in 1983, which at least had the decency to close immediately.
“Obviously, it hasn’t worked as well as we hoped,” D&D chairman Des Gunewardena tells The Post with sublime British understatement.
With a prelude like that — and predictions that Queensyard would be “another Bluebird” — rallying the troops must have taken a pep talk only Winston Churchill could give.
But Queensyard, on the mall’s fourth floor, is a surprisingly happy story. It’s been open for both lunch and dinner since Day 1, unlike other Hudson Yards restaurants that could only handle one or the other (the complex’s most-hyped place, Mercado Little Spain, still remains dark until 4 p.m.).
The design resembles neither a “traditional English home” (as the restaurant’s imaginative publicity states) nor an “airport lounge” (as it strikes Yards-hating bloggers). Instead, its mix of curvaceous chairs, upholstered booths and Thames River murals blur into a medley of casual luxury that’s a pleasure to spend a few hours in.
Laughter and cheerful banter flow from a gleaming, central ovoid bar across the restaurant’s nearly 12,000 square feet. There are three distinct eating zones — a luxe dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows, a rougher-hewn “kitchen” area for more casual bites and a coffee/wine bar.
The gin-cured cold salmon ($17) at the bar blew me away. Chicken tenders ($15) weren’t so different from most others. But watch tourists scale the windy Vessel while you cozy up with a Toto ($16), an elixir of Inverroche gin, Fever Tree Indian tonic, pomegranate and lime. It’s bracing enough to make a die-hard New Yorker brave the steps.
Queensyard, 20 Hudson Yards; 212-377-0780, QueensyardNYC.com
