Cafe Edison to be replaced by Comfort Food Eatery Friedman’s

Cafe Edison, the famous Theater District haunt that closed in December, will get a second act, the Daily News has learned.

 

Friedman’s Lunch, a rustic comfort food restaurant well-known for its salmon platters, lox, pastrami hash and gluten-free fare, will replace the Cafe Edison, the longtime theater district staple where stagehands and Broadway stars chowed down on borscht and blintzes, the Daily News has learned exclusively.

The news comes nearly a year after it was revealed that the Edison, affectionately called the Polish Tea Room because of its Eastern European-inspired menu and its location inside an ornate ballroom at the Edison Hotel on W. 47th St., would shutter after 34 years amid rising rents.

For its loyal patrons, the closure represented the end of an era and the demise of an institution.

But commerical broker Jeff Roseman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who did the deal for the new restaurant, says he thinks Friedman’s will be able to fill the hole left by the cafe with its Jewish-inspired healthy grub and give the space a whole new lease on life.

Just like the Cafe Edison, the new restaurant is not some flashy, white-tablecloth type space, he said. It’s a modest, family business.

“It’s old-school, hearty good food. We must have gotten 50 offers but the landlord didn’t want big chains or celebrity chefs. They wanted something warm. This is going to be everything the Edison Cafe was — just a few decades later,” he said,

Friedman’s is not new to the city. It already has locations at Chelsea Market, Herald Square, and in Hell’s Kitchen and on the Upper West Side.

It also traces its roots to Eastern Europe.

“My grandmother was from Poland. I grew up with my grandmother in the kitchen making blitzers with little more than a penny,” said Alan Phillips, founder of Friedman’s. “We’ll have a lot of the same menu items. We have a great chicken soup and a great reuben but we also do vegan food and quinoi. It’s not as narrow as a classic, Jewish delicatessen. We take traditional Polish cuisine and bring it up to date.”

Phillips, who said he’d enjoyed eating at the Cafe Edison, said he hopes the theater community will embrace the new concept, just as they did with the old eatery 20 years ago.

“We want to be somewhere that people can eat two and three times a week,” he said. “We’re not some gimicky theme restaurant. We’re a neighborhood restaurant with honest, good food.”

But theater insiders say it the Cafe Edison will be a hard act to follow.

“Last week I wasn’t feeling well and dearly missed the Edison’s chicken soup,” said theater blogger and writer Howard Sherman.

Will Friedman’s ultimately be welcomed by Broadway?

“The proof is in the soup,” Sherman said.

And the latkes, says Tony winner Linda Lavin, who was a fixture at the Edison.

“The Edison felt like going to grandma’s house,” said Lavin, whose movie, “The Intern,” opens Monday. “Now, it will be like going to the in-laws. I hope that the new place works for me and everyone in the theater. I hope it’s not too expensive.”

Others were wrankled by news that the cafe had been booted for such a similar concept.

“It seems silly to replace the Edison, which had history and family relationships with a chain that will approximate that,” said actress Martha Plimpton, a New Yorker who is currently in California filming the ABC sitcom “The Real O’Neals.” “I haven’t eaten there. It may be fine.”

One thing’s for sure: The Edison was irreplacable.

It was opened in 1980 by Polish childhood sweethearts Harry and Frances Edelstein, whose families were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust.

It quickly became a regular haunt for the theater crowd. Playwrights, performers, producers and Broadway stars were often seen enjoying its Jewish comfort food staples, such as the matzo ball soup, stuffed cabbage and beef brisket. Playwright August Wilson scibbled notes on napkins, Jackie Mason and Lavin traded stories and Neil Simon famously declared, “There is something magical about this place.”

Struggling actors often got meals on the house, since Harry and Frances knew what it was like to need a helping hand.

A spokesman for the Edison Hotel was not immediately available for comment on the new tenant.

Friedman’s is slated to open in early spring 2016.