Morimoto, Buddakan latest Philly expats

We here in Philadelphia love to see our home grown kids out in the world. It doesn’t happen that often — Philadelphians tend to stay close to home — and when it does, we get excited. All we require is that you shout “Philly, what?” or something like that when you get big. This is how Eve handles it. This is why we loved, say, Wilt (even though he went to L.A.), but will always be a little meh on Kobe Bryant.

Where am I going with this? Oh, right, The New York Times today profiles the latest Philly expat, Stephen Starr. He’s not leaving Philadelphia, per se, since he still has 400 restaurants here and commutes to New York. But he is opening up Morimoto next Tuesday and Buddakan about two weeks later in the Big Apple.

We Philadelphians, of course, all wish him the best, even if we’re still a little ticked we have to spend $6 for a drink at Pod. (Gee, who knew Penn kids had so much disposable income?) And, come on, Morimoto is the Iron Chef, how can he fail?

The Philadelphia versions of these restaurants are, of course, wildly popular, and he expects the New York ones to be the same. The Morimoto in NYC is going to look a little different, especially with this kind of wall decoration:

For Morimoto, the Japanese architect Tadao Ando agreed to take on his first restaurant project. Morimoto is on two levels and has walls of nearly 20,000 of the new clear, shimmering Ty Nant water bottles…. At a design meeting with Mr. Ando there was considerable discussion among the architects and engineers about whether the Ty Nant water bottles should be full or empty. Mr. Starr’s only comment was that Ty Nant “should give us the water free for all the publicity they’re getting.” They did. But the water has to be served in the restaurant.

Enjoy staring at those bottles all night long, New Yorkers!

With 420 New Seats to Fill, Restaurateur Banks on Buzz [NYT via Philebrity]