Chef Spotlight
Clockwise, right: The New Leaf dining room; the restaurant
exterior; apple crisp with ginger ice cream; school children
help out in the garden; Bette Midler attends an Arbor Day
event; hot chocolate; and New Leaf’s pan-roasted chicken.
New Leaf
Restaurant
& New York
Restoration
Project
Celebrating a decade of
doing good by eating well
Ten years ago, New Leaf Restaurant & Bar opened in upper Man-
hattan’s Fort Tryon Park, bringing an exciting new entry to the ranks
of New York’s most beloved restaurants and signaling the turning
of a figurative new leaf for the city’s parks and green spaces.
It was 1995 when Bette Midler, award-winning actress and
singer, stumbled upon a dilapidated concession stand while she
and friends were cleaning up Fort Tryon Park. Midler had founded
New York Restoration Project ( nyrp.org) out of a concern for New
York’s forgotten and neglected green spaces, and the 1930s-vintage
cobblestone structure they found while doing some of the project’s
earliest work possessed substantial charm despite its state of
disrepair. The seed for New Leaf was planted that day.
