At Brasserie Favored by Celebrities, Big Mirror Falls, but Lunch Is Served
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS and AL BAKERFEB. 20, 2015
New York Times
As accidents go, it was so very New York.
Amid the clank of silverware inside the popular SoHo brasserie Balthazar on Friday morning, a 10-by-8-foot mirror peeled away from the wall and came down slowly onto customers in the midst of their breakfast. Some diners scattered. One person, a former French government official, was slightly hurt.
And then the day rumbled right along.
“We are still open for business,” Christopher, a reservations manager who declined to give his last name, said by telephone after the mishap.
Most people stayed to finish their food, a witness said, and by lunchtime there was a 40-minute wait for two seats at the bar.
“We had a little bit of a situation,” one host, in a natty, tailored suit and a skinny maroon tie, told a group of would-be-patrons who inquired about a table. “One of our mirrors fell down, so we’re very limited on space.”
Officials said the chaos began at 10:08 a.m., when a person dialed 911 from a cellphone to report that a large mirror “fell onto a group of people,” a spokesman for the Fire Department said. Firefighters from Engine 55, on nearby Broome Street, and officers of the Police Department’s Fifth Precinct rushed to the restaurant, at 80 Spring Street.
Inside, emergency workers found one patron, a 52-year-old man, complaining of head and neck pain, officials said. He did not appear to have visible injuries and was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center and later released.
The police initially said the man identified himself as Arnaud Française, but the department later confirmed that he is Arnaud Montebourg, 52, a former minister of economy for France.
Another employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering his boss, said the mirror — 80 square feet of clouded, distressed glass in a dark frame — had come off the wall slowly, giving many diners time to move out of the way before it landed. A group of customers and waiters jumped to their feet and braced the mirror as it dropped, giving other patrons time to scurry away before the mirror was guided to rest on tabletops.
“There was some screaming as it was happening, definitely,” the employee said. “Then once it was down, you could hear a pin drop.”
Several hours later, the mirror remained where it had fallen, in the back corner of the large restaurant, its face planted on the tabletops and its naked wooden back exposed.
Just a few feet away, the lunch crowd nibbled on fresh bread and escargot.
“That was today?” asked Eva Cermanova, who sat down with her husband at noon to celebrate her new American citizenship. “I thought you were talking about something that happened last week.”
Ms. Cermanova, who is from the Czech Republic, declared herself delighted that the restaurant remained open despite the ruckus — she received free sparkling wine from the bartender when she told him of her new status.
For nearly 20 years, Balthazar has been a Vanity Fair of New York City, and its busy power-breakfast scene persists for a downtown set of media people, chefs, writers and fashion executives.
The man behind the restaurant and several others, Keith McNally, specializes in creating scenes, by offering a combination of a celebrity-studded hangout and comfort food. Mr. McNally, whose other ventures include Cherche Midi in NoLIta and Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is one of the most influential restaurateurs in the city.
He is also lucky. Witnesses and police officials said the mirror did not shatter, which could have scattered shards of glass and potentially caused more injuries.
How the mirror fell was not immediately known. Christopher, the reservations manager, said the restaurant was filled with a typical number of breakfast customers, though he could not provide an exact head count.
The police said officials from the city’s Buildings Department were at the restaurant looking into the episode.
A pair of diners said they were unperturbed when a row of firefighters tramped through the restaurant. But the restaurant employee who declined to divulge his name wondered at those hunkered down in booths right beneath several distressed, clouded mirrors affixed to the wall, some even larger than the one that had fallen.
“I’m born and raised here,” the employee said, with the fullness of a New York accent. “I’m thick-skinned. But I wouldn’t want to sit over there.”