Brand new Magnolia gastropub opening tonight

As you all may or may not know, Magnolia is definitely one of my five favorite restaurants in the city, and quite possibly my absolute favorite if I were forced to make a choice.  

They have been closed for renovation for the last nine days to make some major changes not just to the space itself, but also to the menu and the ‘concept’ of the restaurant.  They re-open tonight and I encourage anyone who can make it to attend.  I also encourage everyone to check out owner Dave McLean’s very thoughtful and engaging blog about the remodel.  Here are a few highlights:

The new menu: They are embracing the slow food movements principles of local, fresh ingredients (even more than before) as well as the British concept of the gastropub (pub food, but done really well, with care for the final quality of the dish).  Neither of these seem like such as stretch from what they were doing before, I’d say both were ideas were manifest in their previous menu, so it will be interesting to see how they will be taking this further.  

The new concept:  Certainly the slow food and gastropub concepts will be part of the new Magnolia experience, but it also seems like there is an additional element that for lack of a better word I’ll call ‘elegance’.  The old Magnolia featured Grateful Dead-inspired murals and bright colors in the restaurant and online.  The new Magnolia I haven’t seen yet, but the website is all black and silver and chic.  I do hope this means it will be less of a crush of people inside and that they’ll develop a better system for taking names on the waitlist (as opposed to the current practice of threading through the whole restaurant dodging other waitlistees with drinks in their hands and waiters with trays of food to make it to the far corner to hang out by the kitchen entrance for 10 minutes trying to find someone to take your name).  On the other hand, I hope it doesn’t go too far upscale - we already have The Alembic for that.  

The new space: Both the restaurant space and the restrooms are being remodeled.  There are only a few details I know for sure as of now and these include:

 

 

• The mural is coming down (sad!) and there will be new paint in the restaurant
• The booths now have wainscoting
• There is new tile in the bathrooms
• Perhaps most excitingly: a new tap wall!

Hopefully, I will get a chance to check it out tonight.  My original plan was to get there as early as possible (5:30-ish?), but of course fate has decided that today will be the busiest day yet on my current case at work.  So, my new plan is just to try to make it at all, most likely on the later end of the night.  Email me if you’d like to meet up at Magnolia!