Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin-starred Per Se, the New York tasting menu restaurant in Columbus Circle that celebrated its 20th anniversary in February, is closed for now.
An Instagram post from the restaurant from Wednesday, September 11, then updated on Wednesday, September 18, notes that it is “continuing to address the unexpected kitchen maintenance,” with an emphasis on “the safety and well-being of our team and guests.”
“Scheduled permitted kitchen maintenance in Aug 2024 has taken slightly longer than anticipated to complete; the restaurant is looking forward to welcoming guests back into the main dining room as soon as possible,” says a spokesperson for the restaurant. “The private dining room has remained open.”
The spokesperson confirms the restaurant’s gas has been turned off by FDNY.
As the East Coast Thomas Keller outpost, Per Se has been under more than typical scrutiny over the past two decades. Both Yountville, California’s French Laundry and Per Se maintain a whopping three Michelin stars — and Per Se has kept them for 17 years running.
Keller remains a prominent booster for the Michelin guides, even campaigning alongside his acolytes behind the scenes to bring stars to Texas, as reported by Eater Austin earlier this year. This summer, the guide announced it would go to the Lone Star State.
A decade after Per Se opened, it landed a four-star New York Times review. Sam Sifton effusively declared, “This is the best restaurant in New York City: Per Se, in the Time Warner Center, just up the escalator from the mall, a jewel amid the zirconia. I make the argument unreservedly.”
In 2016, Pete Wells dropped the restaurant to two stars, asking, “Is Per Se worth the time and money? In and of itself, no.” It was followed by Keller’s message to guests, “We are sorry we let you down.”
Kim Severson of the Times piggybacked a year later off that review, noting Keller “was at a crossroads.”
“Mr. Keller is 61,” Severson wrote, “an age when other successful chefs of his generation have started to plot exit strategies and consider legacies.”
In response to her question, Keller replied, “I go back and forth on the level of intensity I want to continue to dedicate to my profession because I’ve done it now for the past 44 years, and that’s a long time .... When is taking care of everybody else less important than taking care of yourself?”
With Corey Chow at the helm in 2019, Eater critic Ryan Sutton noted that the restaurant was back on track, with caveats, particularly because the add-ons were so expensive for the time — even as the restaurant was then reportedly raking in $24 million a year.
This was around the opening of TAK Room in Hudson Yards, part of the first wave of restaurants that came in and went (partly due to the pandemic) in the expensive development. Keller’s TAK Room shuttered in 2020.
In 2021, Keller’s restaurants and other high-end fine dining spots were spotlighted for racism, particularly for not promoting Black women chefs. “While discrimination in the industry is a problem both for women and for people of color,” the Times reported, “they say they suffered the combined effects of both racism and sexism. And they see even fewer opportunities now, as restaurants struggle for survival in the pandemic.”
Two years later, the Per Se team temporarily closed the restaurant in July 2023 for a facelift. “Beginning July 30th, we will start our extended break and temporarily close our doors as we enter an exciting transformation since our opening in 2004,” read the Instagram post. “This summer break will allow time to complete the innovative design flourishes in our kitchen, dining room, and salon with our trusted partner and friend, Tihany Design.”
The restaurant reopened in the fall, with extended celebrations of the 20th anniversary at the restaurant and online. It called out past executive and pastry chefs throughout its legacy, including Chad Palagi, Eli Kaimeh, and Jonathan Benno, now at Jean-Georges’s Four Twenty-Five.
Now, about a year after those renovations, the restaurant has shuttered again, for now.