James Beard Winner to Oversee Restaurants at the First New York Location of a Massive Parisian Department Store

Paris luxury department store founded in 1865, Printemps is opening at 1 Wall Street, inside a condo skyscraper. When it debuts in 2025, the forthcoming Financial District complex will house five restaurants, all overseen by Saga Hospitality (Crown Shy, Saga) owned by James Kent, with a knack for becoming top players in New York’s fine dining, headquartered in Fidi. A spokesperson confirms that all the food and beverage offerings — ranging from “ fine dining to a casual café” — will be new and exclusive to this location. They’ll be led by culinary director Gregory Gourdet, for whom this is his first collaboration with Saga.

An alum of Jean-Georges’ restaurants, Gourdet moved to Portland, Oregon in 2008, spending a decade cooking at the hotel restaurant Departure. He was a finalist on Top Chef season 12, and later a judge. In 2022, he opened his Portland-based wood-fired Haitian restaurant, Kann. In 2023, he took home the James Beard Award for “Best New Restaurant.” He had previously won a James Beard Award for his cookbook, Everyone’s Table.

“I am absolutely thrilled to join the team at Printemps and contribute to this historic project,” Gourdet said in a press release. “As a native New Yorker, this is a homecoming, and I am excited to cook once again in NYC, the city I still proudly call home.”

In the past year, James Kent has been on an expansion tear with Saga Hospitality. He is working on a forthcoming seafood restaurant with an attached bakery, at 360 Park Avenue South, at East 26th Street. The 7,000-square-foot space that was once home to Park Avenue Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer. He later announced the restaurant group is gearing up for a 3,000 square-foot bakery, that will anchor the revamped Domino sugar factory building in Williamsburg, led by his group’s acclaimed pastry chef, Renata Ameni.

There are around 20 locations of Printemps, mainly in France, most recently in Doha, Qatar, where it’s attached to a hotel, spa, and cinema. Since 2013, the group has received funding from a Qatari-backed investment fund, Divine Investments SA.