ALBANY — NeoVista Hospitality, which revived Jack’s Oyster House in December and has multiple other food concepts in varying stages of development downtown, has added a pair of businesses to its stable, including an all-day bakery and cafe at 66 State St. It also hired two more people for senior leadership roles, among them the longtime sommelier of Yono’s in Albany, as it continues a search for a successor to the founding chef of the oyster house, who left the company about a month after Jack’s reopened.
NeoVista is working on the bakery, called Cafe 66, at 66 State St., a block from Jack’s Oyster House. The cafe will be next door to a former bank building at 60 State St. that NeoVista has leased for banquets and other private events, as well as two forthcoming Japanese bars in the basement vault level.
Cafe 66, intended as a destination for breakfast, lunch and light evening fare and as a comfortable workspace option outside of an office, will occupy the ground floor of a brass-doored building that previously was home to the large accounting firm UHY, now located elsewhere downtown. There are apartments on the upper floors. Cafe 66 will be the headquarters for Starla Bradshaw, NeoVista’s senior pastry chef, also formerly of Yono’s. She and staff will produce pastries and other baked goods for the cafe in addition to all desserts and bread for NeoVista’s restaurants, said John Hwang, chief operating officer for the hospitality group’s parent company, NeoVista Equities, a Long Island real estate and private equity firm that began its move into Albany about a year ago.
When will they open?
Hwang said NeoVista Hospitality, which is having interiors for the several concepts built off-site prior to installation in 60 and 66 State, is projecting roughly simultaneous openings in March or April for Cafe 66 and, in contiguous basement spaces next door, a sake and whiskey bar called Izakaya Kinko and a wine bar called The Vault. The former bank vault and its massive door remain intact, with two AV-equipped rooms within the vault proper becoming sites for private tastings and perhaps karaoke parties, according to Hwang…