Moscow 57 to Put Down Restaurant Roots

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

Published: August 8, 2013

Moscow 57, the food and entertainment company started several years ago by Ellen Kaye, has long had a pedigree: Ms. Kaye’s parents, Faith Stewart-Gordon and Sidney Kaye, owned the Russian Tea Room from 1947 to 1996. But only now has it found itself a home.

Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Ellen Kaye brings extensive restaurant and catering experience to the project.

The company plans to open a restaurant called Moscow 57 in October on Delancey Street on the Lower East Side. “Delancey Street is back to where my grandfather Jacob Kalmanowitz started out as a butcher before going on to become a Midtown restaurateur in the early 1900s,” Ms. Kaye said in an e-mail.

Moscow 57 has led a nomadic existence, showing up to perform and serve food all over the city, including in Harlem and Chelsea and on Governors Island, as well as in the Hamptons; Woodstock, N.Y.; and New Orleans. The company also does catering.

Ms. Kaye runs the operation and performs with her partners, Seth Goldman, a chef who graduated from the French Culinary Institute, and Ethan Fein, whose expertise is in the music business. They will also be her partners in the 40-seat red-lacquered restaurant, with Mr. Goldman cooking a menu that combines Russian classics like chicken Kiev, blinis and beef stroganoff, along with Central Asian and Georgian specialites, including Kazakh lamb and pumpkin dumplings in the fall. They plan tea service in the afternoon and zakuski, which Ms. Kaye described as Russian tapas, throughout the day. There will also be live music.

Ms. Kaye brings extensive restaurant and catering experience to this project, having built a career at New York restaurants, including 11 years with the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group. Her singing, at the Iridium and other spaces, has been described as a blend of jazz, blues, rock and folk.