New Conde Nast Café Gets Food Review Thumbs Down

The employee cafe at the relocated offices of magazine publisher Conde Nast in Downtown Manhattan's One World Trade Center (WTC) recently got a thumbs down from an anonymous restaurant reviewer in the New York Daily News. Last fall, the company  moved from its Midtown digs near Times Square to the WTC location, leaving behind a $30 million Frank Gehry-designed onsite cafe that won an FM Best Concept Best of Show Award back in 2000 (article unavailable online).

Meanwhile, the food, courtesy of Restaurant Associates (coincidentally, the Best Concept Best of Show winner last year), has gone from threatening to turn fashionably thin Vogue editors into chowhounds to, "It's not amazing. It's just fuel," in the words of one Conde editor quoted in the review. RA still does the food, and the descriptions in the review still make it sound tempting, at least to non-Conde diners who hadn't experienced the "amazing" of the previous 15 years.

The eatery's dozen stations include an antipasti section, a veggie-filled raw bar, a grill, a fresh juicing station, an international station that changes each day and grab and go ranging from soup to nuts and frozen yogurt.