Savvy restaurateur Taavo Somer has avoided the “hipster” appellation since the opening of Freemans, that taxidermy fantasia on the Lower East Side. The aggressive grizzly man pose of the alleyway eatery aside, Freemans is still a nice place to have a bite. We like to go when our father or brothers are in town — why pass up a perfectly good dumb joke?
Now Mr. Somer has made the logical progression and chased the Freemans Sporting Club scruff across the L to Williamsburg, where he will open his first Brooklyn-based place, Isa, next week. And then he could be done.
“Might be the last project that I’ll do in the city, and I feel like it might be the last restaurant I do,” Mr. Somer tells The New York Times in today’s Styles section.
Taavo aficionados, begin your collective freakout. To make matters worse, he’s picked a rather disconcerting place to perhaps move his wife and young children if he does decide to retire.
“Darien’s nice,” he said, with only the slightest touch of irony.
We don’t have to ask, but again: What Was the Hipster?
nfreeman@observer.com
