A new restaurant in New York’s Botanical Garden

Architect Peter Bentel created an open kitchen for the Hudson Garden Grill, the new restaurant at the New York Botanical Garden.

New York City has some of the best museum restaurants in the game: Saul at the Brooklyn Museum, the Modern at MoMA, Untitled is reopening at the new Whitney with a revamped menu soon, and let’s not forget the most competitive turf in the market – the army of food carts outside of the Met. And now, over in the Bronx, the New York Botanical Garden will soon be home to the Hudson Garden Grill, just in time for cherry-blossom season. The restaurant is smack in the middle of the Ross Conifer Arboretum, meaning that for those of you who just adore a greenhouse view, the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is right across the path.

Blue-and-white gingham tablecloths lend an easy elegance to the dining room.

After taking a look at the garden for the first time this past September, the partners at the architecture firm Bentel & Bentel decided to include modern touches – an exhibition kitchen, whitewashed paneling, and copper chandeliers – to the custom-designed restaurant space.

(left) The dining room’s whitewashed, rough-sawn paneling was made from trees that fell in the garden during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. (right) Another view of the exhibition kitchen and bar.

“We wanted to make sure the architecture and interior design settled in well with the traditional surroundings of the garden,” said Peter Bentel. “We kept the original bones of the building, but then layered over those bones with contemporary features.”

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