A heartening experiment is under way at Rockefeller Center, where new restaurants are sprouting up from thoughtful local chefs at the top of their game. A stroll through the labyrinthine subterranean concourse reveals, alongside the predictable Sweetgreen and Starbucks, grab-and-go branches of such New York City gems as the nirvana of Italian sandwiches Alidoro, which originated in SoHo more than thirty years ago, and J. J. Johnson’s Harlem-based rice-bowl enterprise, Fieldtrip. Anchoring these are a set of sophisticated new restaurants, including the elegant all-day Italian café Lodi, from Ignacio Mattos; the Art Deco palace Le Rock, from the chefs behind Frenchette; the brainy Korean tasting-menu den Naro, from the owners of Atomix and Atoboy; and Five Acres, from the chef Greg Baxtrom, of the beloved Prospect Heights spot Olmsted. Among this company, Jupiter, a casually refined Italian restaurant on the concourse level, cuts a stylish figure.
Jupiter, from the British chefs Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer (who met working at the River Café in London) and the American Annie Shi—their first place was the SoHo jewel box King, which they opened in 2016—is named for the supreme Roman god. Befitting a move uptown, Jupiter is twice the size of King, but the space retains a warm feel, with one set of tables off a handsome red-travertine bar and another across from the open kitchen, with a prime view of the skating rink and its showpiece, the eighteen-foot gilt-bronze statue of Prometheus, mid-handoff of the eternal flame.
In 2020, when they were tapped by Tishman Speyer, the real-estate company responsible for corralling all this culinary talent, Shadbolt, de Boer, and Shi knew that they wanted to do pasta and wine; they focussed on bridging the gap between their intimate approach and the massive hustle of their new location. “We wanted to create something that lent itself to that buzzy, energized place that is the Rockefeller Center—it’s super iconic,” Shadbolt told me. They wanted to “echo the Italian piazza in its accents. It’s a real thoroughfare, midtown. An Italian, genteel, all-day eatery is really what wowed us.”
Sophisticated cocktails befitting Piazza Navona lean bitter and beautiful, following the current vogue of sourcing obscure ingredients (olive leaf, smoked rhubarb) and amari. You could make a lovely meal of just appetizers, including the grand pane, a basket of carta di musica and focaccia; carciofi alla giudia, flowery clusters of fried artichoke with lemon for spritzing; and insalata di stagione, a winter salad of radicchio di Treviso, wine-braised pear, and hazelnuts, rounded out by salty Ubriaco cheese. But do not miss the deconstructed crab toast—a plate of grilled pagnotta bread, a pile of sweet crab, a dollop of aioli, and a dressed fennel salad—or the beef sott’olio, for which a seared filet is sliced thin and marinated in olive oil, resulting in luscious, silky sheets of beef, showered with fresh horseradish and flaky salt.
Be warned: butter and olive oil are deployed copiously. Butter sauce blankets rabbit agnoli and spinach-and-ricotta tortellini. A fascinating Tuscan dish of buttered noodles topped with seared chicken livers doubles down on decadent austerity; whole dorade, roasted to perfection, is finished with melted anchovies and fragrant olive oil.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that Jupiter would feel not quite as special as King—extensive branding, with a recurring curlicue motif (mirroring skaters’ paths?), seems heavily conceptual. A Jupiter “pasta water” candle, burning in the unisex bathroom, is also for sale.
But rinkside on a Thursday afternoon, nursing a nutmeg-dusted bowl of veal-and-chicken brodo, a diner cannot deny the feeling of cozy respite. Jupiter serves lunch and dinner on weekdays; mid-April, they plan to open on Saturdays, too. “We’re very much looking forward to spring,” Shadbolt said. “We’re looking at a risi e bisi, a classic Venetian pea-and-mint risotto, so that’s on the docket for when the peas arrive.” And, after ice-skating season, the rink becomes Flipper’s, a roller disco. (Dishes $12-$63.) ♦
