Manhattan Dealer Robert Mnuchin is the latest art market powerhouse to enter the restaurant business, opening a French-Italian restaurant with his daughter Valérie Mnuchin on New York’s Shelter Island, a secluded spot nestled between the North and South Forks of Long Island.
Léon 1909 is open for its first full summer after having opened at the end of last season in a former bank building. The restaurant is named after Robert’s father, who was born in 1909 and whose love for travels to the Mediterranean coast of Europe inspired the setting of the restaurant. A framed portrait of him hangs in the restaurant.
The Mnuchins restaurant serves French and Italian cuisine using regional ingredients with a wood-burning fireplace in the center of the restaurant. It’s one of many new or renovated restaurants to open on the island since the Covid-19 pandemic brought an influx of transplant recipients and seasonal New York residents.
“We wanted to do something that would be a kind of community center, open all year round,” Valerie said. north fork Last year.
Robert Mnuchin isn’t the first blue-chip merchant to get into the restaurant business. Megadealer Larry Gagosian is co-owner of Kappo Massa, the upscale sushi restaurant below its Madison Avenue gallery. Last month, Swiss dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth announced that they open a restaurant and bar in New York’s Soho district, across from a new Hauser & Wirth space, the city’s third-largest retailer. The Wirths already operate a handful of restaurants and pubs in the US and UK.
Mnuchin is no stranger to seeing his children get into high-pressure ventures: Valerie’s half-brother Steven served as Treasury Secretary under US President Donald Trump.
