This area businessman is slowly taking on certainly one of the town’s grimier subway stations.
The same man who opened a bar within the fiftieth Street downtown 1 station has now also cut the ribbon on a coffee shop mere steps away.
Subterranean Midtown magnate Adrien Gallo is now the proprietor of not only the commuter cocktail retreat Nothing Really Matters, but in addition Tiny Dancer, a restaurant slinging lattes and breakfast treats in the identical dingy hallway under a bustling Midtown street.
“I wanted to construct a restaurant that was fashioned in spite of everything the neighborhood ‘bars’ in Milan and Rome,” Gallo told The Post. “The ones you pop into within the morning, after which back within the afternoon, and possibly the evenings. Something that was nicer than it must be, welcoming and fun.”
Tiny Dancer quietly opened initially of September, reviving a industrial corner of passageway that’s also home to the gallery Public Works Administration, which occupies a hair salon that shut during COVID.
Vacant because the pandemic, the 300-square-foot space now occupied by the cafe had previously been a smoke shop, but after walking past it day by day on the technique to his just below two-year-old bar, Gallo decided to provide it a latest lease on life.
“I talked to my landlord about my idea they usually were totally into it,” he said.
In the strategy of gutting it, behind layers of sheetrock and peg board, he found the unique tile that now lines Tiny Dancer’s partitions and served as inspiration for the space’s overall color palette — giving the cafe a way of place.
The shop is open 7 a.m. to six p.m. Monday to Friday (closed on weekends). In addition to its current small slate of offerings, there are plans to start out slinging flat bread and “a more robust lunch program,” said Gallo, adding “I actually have a tremendous little team holding court and day-after-day we get totally amazed customers, because we’re on this little beautiful space that is sort of an oasis within the [city] subway system.”
