Luxe Two-Level Steakhouse Sets Spring Due Date in Little Italy

Built from the ground up and buoyed by a $6.5 million dollar budget, CH Projects’ next offering is the local hospitality collective’s largest and most lavish by far, which is saying something for a company that’s known for going big. Called Born & Raised, the all-in project has progressed in fits and starts since late 2015 but is now slated to swing open in late May. Calling it a classic American steakhouse filtered through the CH Projects lens, co-founder Arsalun Tafazoli told Eater that the no-expense-spared venue is a deliberate push against the growing tide of casual eateries that are flooding the local market, saying that the historic nature and scope of the Little Italy building, which was a drug store and soda fountain in the 1930s and then housed Nelson Photo Supply for many decades, required a destination dining experience that would do the space justice.

The 225-seat India Street restaurant will span 10,000-square-feet, thanks to a newly accessible rooftop that has been added onto the original one story building. Describing the design as ‘mid-century modern meets deco’, Paul Basile of BASILE Studio is fashioning a main dining room full of graceful lines and curved edges, with Italian leather booths surrounding “bloom-shaped” walnut veneer-clad columns rising up from the custom-designed terrazzo flooring. Brass table bases, and the 45-foot cocktail bar, will be topped with Italian green marble and ornate detailing, but the steakhouse’s showpiece might be the exposed high-end kitchen, which will include a 40-square-foot glass-enclosed dry-aging room for Born & Raised’s prized beef offerings.

Courtesy rendering

A suspended steel-and-wood staircase under a skylight will lead guests up to a 2,700-square-foot rooftop, which will house more dining tables, a flowering steel trellis-shaded lounge, copper fireplaces and its own bar. The kitchen will also make use of an area dedicated to an urban garden. The food and beverage details are still being kept under wraps, but Tafazoli revealed that much of the menu will be delivered via old-school upscale tableside cart service and promises that the steakhouse will have the best scotch list in the city.