NY’s Hollywood Hangout Is Going, Going, GONE

For Drew Nieporent, seeing Tribeca Grill—the restaurant he co-owned with Robert De Niro and ran for 35 years—emptying its contents brings up mixed emotions: “I’ve never thrown anything away!” For all the many restaurants Nieporent has opened (like Nobu) and closed (Montrachet, Corton) over the years, this is the veteran New York restaurateur’s first auction. “It hurts so much that we’re doing this auction that I sort of stayed away because it gets me upset.” The sentiment is understandable given how synonymous the Tribeca Grill is with its namesake neighborhood and Nieporent himself.

Founded in 1990, Tribeca Grill was more than a place to eat—it became a cultural universe unto itself. It was a film industry clubhouse, including for the staff of upstairs tenant, Miramax Films, during the studio’s rise in the ’90s. Reservoir Dogs had its premiere event at the Tribeca Grill in 1992. It became a party spot in the following decade for the Tribeca Film Festival, which De Niro—who purchased the former Martinson’s Coffee warehouse in the late ’80s and brought in Nieporent to open the restaurant—founded. Celebrities like Sean Penn, Bill Murray, and Christopher Walken were also investors.

But today, the thrill of the Tribeca Grill lies in what remains. Though the restaurant officially closed in 2025, owning the building gave them the luxury of time to get its affairs in order. Walking into the open house auction preview being held by Metro Auctions, inside the now-closed restaurant at 375 Greenwich Street, the sheer size can’t be understood unless you see it in person. Metro Auctions’ website advertised 576 lots—thousands of items.

Inside, dozens of chairs and glasses are stacked, and reclaimed chestnut wood tables each have lot numbers written in Sharpie. The stained glass light fixtures, punctuated with colorful marbles, hover above the dining room like spacecraft. They were designed by the Rockwell Group (founded by architect David Rockwell), which has done the interiors for dozens of restaurants, like Danny Meyer’s spinning Times Square restaurant, The View, and Din Tai Fung’s first New York outpost. The bidding for the lights started at $2,000.

A Metro Auction representative takes me on a tour, allowing me to snoop around in parts of the restaurant I wouldn’t get to access otherwise. Some areas require precarious dances over pipes, tangled wires, and folded grip mats. It feels like I’m an archaeologist searching for fossils. Beyond the dining room are two levels of kitchens where equipment is strewn everywhere. There are Hobart mixers, wooden cheese boards, pans, fryer baskets, coffee makers, woven baskets, and endless equipment. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, I open a still-cold walk-in refrigerator filled with towers of plates; in one back area, there’s a popcorn machine.