Joe Allen Restaurant Will Reopen Its Doors Tonight After 7 Month Closure

Joe Allen Restaurant, the iconic haunt of the Broadway community, will open its doors once again after 7 months, due to the government mandated shutdown. The restaurant has undergone a redesign, courtesy of Tony Award-winning scenic designer David Rockwell as part of DineIn NYC, that assures compliance with current safety protocols while also celebrating the theater community. Following the successful launch of his DineOut NYC initiative, Rockwell has developed DineIn NYC, an integrated interior and exterior space design to help restaurants safely transition back to indoor dining at 25% of pre-COVID capacity.

The redesign involves a new table layout that meets current New York City guidelines for distance and capacity, guided patron choreography that provides safe pathways for diners, an entirely new outdoor seating area, and custom plexiglass table dividers for which Rockwell collaborated with Ruben Toledo (husband and longtime collaborator of the late, Tony Award nominated costume designer Isabel Toledo) and Tony Award winning costume designer Linda Cho to include iconography from the Broadway musicals After Midnight, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, and Anastasia.

For more information, please visit www.joeallenrestaurant.com. To make reservations at Joe Allen, please call 212-581-6464.

Joe Allen said, "We've been serving the theater community since 1965, and over all those years we've faced some good times and we've faced some bad times, but nothing comes close to our current crisis. Just like myself, David Rockwell happily straddles the restaurant and theater worlds, and he's also a great contributor to New York City. He was the perfect person to lead us back to our customers safely and with style."

"Even though we know we'll have to wait a few more months before we can enjoy a Broadway show, the fact that we can now pop into Joe Allen for a meal gives me more comfort and joy than I can explain," added David Rockwell. "It has been a great honor to help bring back one of the most legendary theatrical clubhouses on the planet."

DineOut NYC is a pro bono initiative created by Rockwell Group, in coordination with Melba Wilson, President of the New York City Hospitality Alliance and owner of Melba's Restaurant, and Andrew Rigie, Executive Director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance. The program launched Summer 2020 to advocate for the further use of sidewalks and streets for outdoor dining and to help restaurants affected by the indoor dining closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To encourage the City to expand outdoor dining, Rockwell Group and the New York City Hospitality Alliance identified six restaurants across all five boroughs to present different types of dining experiences, ultimately creating a kit of adaptable parts. Additional communal dining installations followed throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens in areas disproportionally impacted by the pandemic to create new public space for communities.

Joe Allen Restaurant has been nourishing theatergoers and theater professionals for 57 years on W. 46th Street. Starting out, they catered mostly to "chorus kids with bad knees" but quickly became the place where the worlds of theater stars and theatergoers converge. In other words, Joe Allen has defined (and then redefined, and then redefined again) "the theatrical hangout." Perhaps the restaurant's biggest gift to the theatrical community was turning the terrible indignity of being associated with a failed show into an honor (albeit a dubious one) with its famous "flop wall."