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Hip and sleek in…Forest Hills?

<i>Restaurants in established Queens neighborhood experience Manhattan-style renaissance</i>

The new restaurant is striking, with its sleek black exterior and dark interior where neon designs playfully light the space and a waterfall adds a calming sound.

About $100,000 was spent on the women’s bathroom alone (it includes two televisions and a circular sink in the center of the room).

An Asian fusion restaurant with a five-star chef from China — and a sushi chef who worked at Nobu — MoCA could very well be the newest hip restaurant in Manhattan, except for the fact that it’s not. Instead, it’s right off of Austin Street in Forest Hills, an example of the restaurant renaissance taking place in this established neighborhood in Queens.

Always a dining destination for locals, Austin Street has recently seen more trendy eateries open up, providing residents with several Manhattan-like restaurants without having to actually leave the borough. Within the past year or so, at least seven restaurants have opened up on the Austin Street strip or other thoroughfares in the neighborhood: Besides MoCA on 70th Road, there’s Bonfire Grill on Austin Street, Tierra Sana on Queens Boulevard and PJ’s Steakhouse on Yellowstone Boulevard, which opened last summer. On Metropolitan Boulevard, there’s the eatery My Kitchen, the Pampas Argentinas steakhouse and La Tavernetta, an Italian place moving into the neighborhood from Glendale.

“People can’t believe there’s a place like this open in Forest Hills; they expect a place like this in Manhattan,” said Vic Fiallo, co-owner of Tierra Sana, an organic restaurant serving cuisine with Native American and South African influences.

About 1,500 square feet, the restaurant, which officially opened in July, used to be a rotisserie chicken place, Fiallo said. It is now an airy lounge with a wall of French doors facing the boulevard and live music on the weekends.

Other trendy restaurants that have been in business for the last few years include Jade, an 8,000-square-foot Asian eatery and lounge right across from the LIRR station, and Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen on Metropolitan Avenue.

Hip restaurants aren’t the only retail newcomers to the area. Within the past year, national specialty grocer Trader Joe’s opened a location on Metropolitan Avenue, right over the border in Rego Park, and Manhattan bed and bath store Laytner’s Linen did the same on Austin Street.

The New York Sports Club opened its second location in the area in the summer of 2007. It’s also in nearby Rego Park on Queens Boulevard.

In addition to the retailers, there are upscale residential condo developments that seem to be “bringing a new energy and focus to the area,” said Mary Hughes, vice president of leasing for Cord Meyer, which developed projects like the Windsor at Forest Hills Condominium, located on 71st Road.

More recently added to the area is the Horizon Group’s Novo 64, with amenities such as a lounge with a catering kitchen, a cinema and a children’s playroom, in addition to a concierge and gym. (Though admittedly, its location on Yellowstone Boulevard is a far walk from Austin Street.)

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The new developments contribute to making the area more desirable, and “go hand in hand” with the new restaurants coming to the area, said John Maltz, president of brokerage Greiner-Maltz. The restaurant rebirth is “driven by the demographics in the area,” which has seen “flat residential prices,” he said, making it an ideal place for younger people to head to after they are priced out of Manhattan or Brooklyn, and, he added, “they are the age group that goes out to eat.”

In Forest Hills, the best spaces on a retail corridor like Queens Boulevard can command $100 to $150 per square foot, Maltz said, while the less desirable places on the boulevard, as well as neighboring side streets, can go for $25 to $30 a square foot. On Austin Street, being on “the right block,” from about 70th to 72nd roads, can cost $150 a square foot, while being on “the wrong block” will run $50 a square foot, Maltz added.

For Tierra Sana’s Fiallo, opening up a restaurant — his first — filled a need that was lacking in the neighborhood. “There weren’t any healthy places to eat,” he said. As a developer of alternative energy businesses, he said it was “natural” for him to be the first to open one.

Filling more than 2,000 square feet, the new MoCA establishment is the parent company’s second location; the first one opened on Long Island over a year ago. Though the company wants to be in Manhattan eventually, Forest Hills was chosen because the competition in Manhattan is stiff, said manager Leo Cheng. “Manhattan has a lot of choices for people,” he said.

Forest Hills, on the other hand, was lacking in “fine dining places,” he said, and added, “We want to provide a modern style to this area.” Starting with the name, apparently: MoCA stands for Modern Culinary Art.

Eight months of renovations and $1.5 million later, MoCA’s design brings a sleek, hip look to the street. Now, “people don’t have to go all the way to Manhattan to eat,” said Cheng.

Besides Austin Street, however, Metropolitan Avenue is developing into a second restaurant row. Galik Amberson, owner of My Kitchen, which originally was on Austin Street in the 1980s before he decamped for Manhattan, has resurrected the restaurant on Metropolitan, near where he lives.

After opening a 1,500-square-foot space last year, he added another 1,500 square feet next door as a banquet hall in January. “It was supposed to be something small,” he joked. “But now it’s turned into something big.”

Running a restaurant in Manhattan is a “nightmare” with inspections from fire, building and health officials, and, of course, high rents, Amberson said. About a decade ago, when he closed his business at Ninth Avenue and 34th Street, his rent was about $15,000 a month for a total of about 6,000 square feet of space on two levels.

Now, Metropolitan Avenue has become a new destination for diners in the neighborhood, as it doesn’t have the traffic and parking issues that Austin Street faces,
he said.

However, the local restaurant revival may not make the guidebooks just yet.
The “Forest Hills restaurant phenomenon is a local Forest Hills phenomenon … no one’s driving in from Long Island to eat in Forest Hills restaurants,” Maltz said.

“Bobby Flay is not opening up a restaurant in the neighborhood.” 

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