Latest news with #Rozell
New York Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
NYC restaurant seats customers in apartment next door
Now this is home cooking! Upper East Side Italian restaurant Caffe Buon Gusto has been quietly seating customers in an apartment next door when their dining room is full, cramming them into its two bedrooms, living room and even hallway — stunning the unsuspecting. 'I had zero idea. They have a main dining room, that's where I assumed we'd be, but when we got there, it was a different story,' said Dylan Rozell, who was dyspeptic at the prospect of eating in a 'bare bedroom' when he visited the East 77th Street joint on Valentine's Day last year with three friends. 'We kept going further back and we go through the kitchen, they bring us down really narrow stairs, then up another set of stairs and next thing you know, I'm in a walk-up building and they open a door to an apartment,' the Staten Island native who lives in FiDi told The Post. Rozell chowed down on his gnocchi with vodka sauce topped with burrata — which he said was 'freaking delicious' — in one of the two bedrooms of the apartment. 5 Dylan Rozell and his friends, who made Valentine's Day reservations at Caffe Buon Gusto, dined in the bedroom of an apartment next door. Courtesy of Dylan Rozell 'Isn't that crazy? There were two tables in our room, and the room was small, giving classic New York City bedroom vibes,' he explained. 'And it was silent in there. Not even an ounce of music.' Other diners occupied other spots in the four-room abode. 'There was one table filled in the living room and then one in the second bedroom,' he continued. When Rozell ventured to the bathroom, he was in for yet another surprise. 'There were beer cases stuffed in the bathtub. I was very confused,' he confessed. 5 When Rozell entered the apartment's bathroom, he was shocked to see cases of beer inside its bathtub. Courtesy of Dylan Rozell Other patrons pointed out the 'strange' seating situation in their reviews on OpenTable, where the restaurant boasts a 4.3 out of 5 rating for its ambience. 'We were seated in a back space that looked like an apartment. The ambiance in that room was particularly strange and quiet as we were eating in the hallway of an apartment,' noted a customer who dined there on March 8. Caffe Buon Gusto — 'Good Taste' in Italian — opened in 1988, and is housed on the first floor of a six-story walk-up. To the right of the restaurant is the entrance to the residential building, where apartment No. 1 has been rented by the restaurant's owner, Nando Ghorchian since 2021, according to property records. Gabrielle Gorman, who lived in the flat-turned dining room for two years until 2019 with a roommate, found out the restaurant took over her pad after she saw a TikTok video in March which did not name the location, which was first identified by East Side Feed. 'I was like, 'OMG, that was my old bedroom!'' Gorman told The Post. 'I was absolutely shocked that I used to live in that apartment.' The apartment is conveniently located near the restaurant's kitchen, accessible through the building's side door. 'That door was always open and you could see into their kitchen,' she remembered. 5 This first floor apartment is being used to seat restaurant customers. Helayne Seidman 5 The restaurant's kitchen can be seen through the building's side door. Helayne Seidman Gorman said she was surprised that the restaurant — whose priciest pasta is a $42.95 linguine with lobster, shrimp, calamari and scallops — would shell out extra dough for the pad. 'I just think it's fascinating that they could afford that apartment too,' she said. 'By the time we moved out, the rent was up to $3,200. When I first moved in, it was $2,900.' The building is owned by Taormina Holding Corporation, based on East 74th Street, who said: 'There are no violations regarding the apartment. Furthermore, the office has not received any complaints from the other tenants regarding the tenancy.' 5 Caffe Buon Gusto is housed on the first floor of a six-story walk-up. Helayne Seidman In 1992, Ghorchian debuted a second Caffe Buon Gusto location in Brooklyn Heights. In 2023, he opened a third in Hoboken. He had another location in Riverdale, which has since closed. He did not return requests for comment by The Post and staff at the restaurant declined to comment. Shari Logan, assistant press secretary for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told The Post: 'New York City and New York State health regulations prohibit home-based restaurants,' noting that homes cannot be used as dining areas.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Evergreen Landscaping & Design Celebrates Two Decades of Transforming Outdoor Spaces in New Jersey
Evergreen Landscaping & Design specializes in high-end hardscape, sustainable planting, and custom outdoor features for residential and commercial clients. Butler, New Jersey, May 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evergreen Landscaping & Design Evergreen Landscaping & Design, a full-service landscape construction firm based in New Jersey, is proudly celebrating almost two decades of delivering high-end outdoor transformations across the Garden State. Officially founded in 2008 by Matthew Rozell, the company has grown from a small, tight-knit team into one of the region's most respected and comprehensive landscape design-build firms, serving both residential and commercial clients with signature precision, craftsmanship, and care. 'When we started Evergreen, we were a small group with big ideas,' said Rozell. 'Ten years ago, we had fewer than 10 people on staff. Today, we're proud to have professionals managing our operations in the office and more than twenty highly trained team members in the field. That kind of growth speaks to the trust our clients have placed in us and the passion we bring to every project.' What sets Evergreen apart is its holistic, full-service approach. As a true design-build firm, Evergreen handles every phase of outdoor development, from initial design and budgeting to the final build. With in-house landscape architects, expert masons, and field crews equipped with the latest tools and training, the company is a one-stop shop for custom hardscapes, sustainable plantings, and striking outdoor features. 'Our clients don't need to coordinate with multiple contractors or vendors,' stated Rozell. 'We take ownership of the entire process, bringing ideas to life, managing logistics, and ensuring seamless execution.' Fire Pit by Evergreen Landscaping & DesignEvergreen has thrived amid New Jersey's construction and outdoor living boom, investing heavily in skilled talent, technology, and equipment. The company's projects span residential and commercial sites, and its specialties include custom hardscapes, sustainable planting, and unique outdoor features like fire pits, kitchens, and rooftop courtyards. With a mission to be Northern New Jersey's most reliable and professional landscape contractor, Evergreen operates with a highly mechanized and efficient approach. Every crew member arrives, wearing Evergreen safety-colored uniforms, and maintains the skills and communication standards needed to deliver top-tier results. Dedicated foremen lead each jobsite, while the office staff ensures seamless logistics and client communication. 'Clean and safe worksites are non-negotiable for us,' added Rozell. 'Every jobsite is fenced, regulated, and maintained daily. I believe that our attention to detail and professionalism at every level are a big part of our success story.' Evergreen's strength is in its integrated design-build model. With landscape architects on staff from the start, the company has gradually taken on a leadership role in the creative process. Where it once executed others' visions, Evergreen is now designing the very spaces it brings to life. 'We're now in the driver's seat,' said Rozell. 'That's been one of the most humbling and exciting parts of our growth, seeing our designs come to life exactly how we envision them.' Evergreen Landscaping & Design is now poised to take on larger site construction jobs and complex commercial projects. Still, Rozell says they are intentional about maintaining the 'sweet spot' in size and culture that allows for personalized service and top-tier execution. 'We're stronger, more skilled, and more efficient than ever,' he stated. 'Our portfolio is bigger, and so are the opportunities. But we're still grounded in the same values: honesty, professionalism, and craftsmanship.' Media Contact Name: Dale Russo Email: drusso@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
UBS Doesn't Know What to Do With All the Art It Inherited From Credit Suisse
When the Swiss banking giant UBS bought its rival Credit Suisse in 2023, it got roughly a half of a trillion dollars in assets as well as customers and offices around the world. It also took on a fleet of model ships, and more than 13,500 artworks, including pieces by Swiss artists Ferdinand Hodler and Félix Vallotton, as well as piles of decorative posters. UBS took over Credit Suisse after it failed under the weight of scandals and losses—including corrupt loans in Mozambique, a rogue private banker and a loss of more than $5 billion when a client went bust. In the integration process, UBS has merged some entities, moved clients over to its systems, unloaded assets and cut jobs. Consumers and Businesses Send Distress Signal as Economic Fear Sets In The Snapchat Move That Leaves Teen Girls Heartbroken Trump Escalates Fight With Big Law Firms, Targeting Paul Weiss I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi How the Four Seasons Hit a Marketing Jackpot With HBO's 'The White Lotus' Still outstanding is the thorny integration of all of that Credit Suisse art. The key questions for UBS's department are whether to store, display, sell or donate it. The art haul brought the total size of its collection to more than 40,000, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars even before the integration. Credit Suisse's art was largely from local Swiss artists—not a seamless fit with the UBS collection, which takes a more global approach, with works from names like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Lucian Freud. There is 'never a dull moment,' said the global head of the UBS art collection, Mary Rozell. An art lawyer and historian who grew up in a small town near the Adirondack Mountains in New York, Rozell runs the roughly dozen-person team tasked with the art integration. One day last fall, high in the Swiss Alps, a semi truck full of fine art sputtered to a halt on a narrow mountain pass. A UBS employee stepped out into a snowstorm, and surrounded by steep cliffs, she tried to help free the truck from the snow and ice. Hours later, the truck returned to the twists and turns of the Fluela Pass and finally reached Davos. It pulled up to a small UBS office where art handlers emptied the cargo into the bank as the November sun went down. The dozens of paintings, photographs and prints, estimated to be worth thousands of dollars, had been taken from a closed Credit Suisse office in St. Moritz. That delivery was a normal day in Switzerland for the UBS art team lately, said Rozell, whose days often involve crisscrossing the U.S., Europe and Asia to decide which art the bank acquires, displays, sells or donates. Much of what goes on in the UBS art collection these days 'wouldn't occur to anyone,' she said. Global banks like UBS, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase have some of the most prestigious art collections in the world, full of blue-chip works from old masters to modern art. They display pieces on the walls of the bank's hallways, offices and conference rooms, and they also loan art to museum exhibitions. Sometimes they donate the works to museums. Art helps banks cultivate wealthy clientele. The most exclusive works often hang inside their private bank wings. Banks make art loans to high-net worth clients—or those that have at least $1 million in investible assets. They also woo clients with connections to the art world and VIP access to exhibitions around the globe. For these clients, their own art can be collateral for loans the bank makes to them. Art is also a big deal in the C-suite, where picking out paintings for an office is considered a senior executive rite of passage. The first major problem Rozell faced in the integration was identifying all of the art she now is in charge of. Credit Suisse's database ran on different software, was largely in German and had gaps when it came to key information. The art team expects it will still take months to clean that database, which covers each piece of art's location, dimensions, valuation, sale history and more. The Credit Suisse offices that UBS planned to close—many in Switzerland due to overlapping home bases—were full of art. Rozell's team has to determine which art stays and goes from each office and where to keep it in the meantime. 'There's still art that will be found somewhere, in a closet in Shanghai or something,' Rozell said. 'Or things that hadn't been accounted for.' Banks keep some art at expensive, highly secure and temperature-controlled facilities, places the industry can privately exhibit works or even broker deals. But UBS has at points in the integration run out of its available space at the professional storage companies it works with in New York, London and Zurich. That left some of the less-valuable art from the collection tucked away into extra rooms within its offices, the temperature cranked down to protect the works. Some of what ended up in front of Rozell and her team wasn't art at all, at least by UBS collection standards. Take the hundreds of decorative posters that UBS found within Credit Suisse. Framed depictions of everything from landscapes to the abstract, the posters weren't UBS collection material. The bank decided to sell the posters to employees, who jumped at the chance to buy them. The sale was so popular it ended a day early. 'There's a picture of some guy, he's got like eight pictures under his arm,' Rozell said. 'You could tell he was decorating his whole bachelor pad in one swoop.' And then there were the model ships, whole fleets of them, captured by Credit Suisse after its takeover of First Boston in the late 1980s. UBS found the ships showcased on special shelves throughout Credit Suisse offices from London to New York, each estimated to be worth hundreds to thousands of dollars. Elsewhere in the collection there were other nautical motifs, crowd-pleasers on Wall Street, such as historical photos of ships. The miniature wooden vessels weren't exactly UBS's style, but there were so many that the bank couldn't get rid of them right away. The ships had to instead be auctioned off slowly in tranches, so as to not flood the market. Three of them sold in London this past week. Rozell didn't say exactly how much of the Credit Suisse art the bank might get rid of, but she estimated it might ultimately be hundreds of pieces. The art it does keep from that collection will be kept mostly within Switzerland, throughout offices and a hotel in Zurich that UBS acquired in the deal. Some of it will be displayed in exhibit lounges at art fairs. Art collectors sometimes need to get permission from an artist to destroy a work, either because of local laws, the contractual terms of a commission or as a courtesy. UBS has had to take these things into consideration with the Credit Suisse offices in Switzerland, for example, where the bank had commissioned art for specific spaces. Emails have poured into UBS over the past two years from current and former employees who want to purchase art from the collection. The bank makes the decision to sell on a case-by-case basis, but the answer is often no. It can't sell art that is core to the collection, for example. It also declines to sell art over a certain value directly to employees, since it is not a private art dealer. (Proceeds from employee sales are donated to various charities, according to the bank.) 'The higher up the person is, sometimes the more pressure there is,' Rozell said. 'You have to be very diplomatic about it.' There is a laundry list of rules the bank has to deal with to donate a single artwork, which is classified as a charitable contribution and can be tax-deductible. (The UBS art team said it doesn't typically seek tax deductions when it makes donations). There are high levels of due diligence required for the recipient organization and its trustees, for example, and anti-money-laundering protocols to take into account. One past donation by UBS, of more than 150 19th- and 20th-century American landscape photographs, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., took five years. UBS has also had to deal with the complicated past of art at Swiss banks, whose World War II-era activities have faced scrutiny over the unreleased funds of Holocaust victims. Recently unearthed documents from bank archives showed Credit Suisse, in particular, had Nazi ties that ran deeper than was previously known, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. UBS and third-party specialists searched the Credit Suisse collection for any art with Nazi links, as part of its broader due-diligence process. 'According to our research and external authorities, no artworks are subject to any particular provenance issues,' the bank said in a statement. When one set of plain steel statues, each around 2 feet tall, reached UBS, with them came a sense of déjà vu. The statues had been sold by UBS years ago. They were eventually bought by Credit Suisse. In fact, more than a dozen artworks that UBS had previously sold have ended up back in its collection through the same round trip. Other parts of the two bank collections have clashed on public view. The style of the UBS collection is what Rozell calls 'the art of our times,' compared with Credit Suisse's relatively narrow Swiss approach. In a UBS exhibition at its New York headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, only one piece of art from the Credit Suisse collection can be found: a chromogenic print by the Swiss artist Beat Streuli. The old Credit Suisse building near Madison Square Park tells a similar story. Artwork from the UBS collection fills the walls of client-facing spaces, while the legacy Credit Suisse collection is mostly in employee-facing common areas like conference rooms and hallways. Write to Gina Heeb at The Week the Smart Money Got Whipsawed by the Market The Ex-Barclays CEO Is Having a Totally Embarrassing Week, and London Can't Stop Watching Eggs Are So Expensive People Are Smuggling Them In From Mexico Why Most Companies Shouldn't Have an AI Strategy UBS Doesn't Know What to Do With All the Art It Inherited From Credit Suisse Sign in to access your portfolio
