Chef David Israelow of One White Street to open Four Corners
A New American restaurant in Chatham NY replaces the historic Blue Plate
David Israelow, the Culinary Director of the Michelin-starred One White Street, will open Four Corners this Spring in Chatham, NY. The restaurant will become a New American tavern with a 40-seat parlor floor restaurant and a 12-seat downstairs bar dining room with an “approachable and fun menu that leans on produce and meats from local farms.”
Four Corners replaces Blue Plate, the storied diner which closed in March after 31 years of country-style home cooking. Israelow found the space, which dates to 1850 when the town was called Four Corners, after many years of searching for a restaurant up in the Hudson Valley, an area he has long felt a connection to as a chef. “Being a NYC-based chef, the Hudson Valley is our farming community,” he said. He was so taken with the area and its farmland that he spent a season in 2017 working as a farm apprentice at Hawthorne Valley Farm.
“That was the turning point for me,” he recalled. “I was a farmer, living on the farm, growing and harvesting ingredients that I would bring back to the city and cook for private dinners.” The experience deeply moved him, and drew him to join the team at One White Street, which designs its menus from ingredients grown on its own farm, Rigor Hill, up in Ghent, NY.
Interestingly, Israelow did not start out as a chef. He was working in finance at JP Morgan post-college and living in the East Village when he caught the cooking bug. “I was eating at all these amazing restaurants and got sucked into it. The next thing I knew, I was in culinary school at night.” Eventually he decided, “if not now, when,” and took the leap.
Eleven years later, after stints in France, in Japan at the Tokyo Sushi Academy, and three formative years at One White Street, he is now moving to the country and opening a place of his own.
One White Street’s Executive Chef and Owner Austin Johnson posted a tribute of gratitude to Israelow on Instagram, wishing him success in his new adventure. “Thank you chef David Israelow,” he wrote. “Thank you for your hard work, spirit, leadership & friendship,” he wrote. “Although you may be physically leaving the restaurant, your contributions will remain for years to come. I look forward to staying connected and collaborating again in our future. I’m so excited for you. Love you chef David et Merci Beaucoup.”
“It’s been such an honor and a privilege to be a part of One White Street from the beginning, to see it through the evolution of the past three years,” Israelow said. “I’ve learned so much about cooking and sourcing and working with a farm and running a complicated restaurant, and now I am going to use all that to open my own restaurant. I am really excited about starting with this old template and converting it into something new. The future is about maintaining an open mind and continuing to evolve and getting better every day.”
Four Corners will open in the Spring at 1 Kinderhook Street in Chatham. For updates and more, follow the restaurant on Instagram.