A Columbia University student who drew widespread attention after converting his dorm room into a restaurant last year has been told that he will have to leave university housing as of May 31.
Senior Jonah Reider told The Wall Street Journal that he received an email from his landlord, a professor, saying "conditions hazardous to all tenants in a faculty building" obliged the termination of his lease.
Reider opened his four-seat restaurant, Pith, this past September in Suite 4-B of the university's Hogan Hall. The subsequent media attention (and lengthy waiting list) also drew the notice of New York City's Department of Health, which told Columbia that dorm kitchens couldn't be used for commercial activity.
"They've chilled out," Reider told The New Yorker in October, "but at the moment I’m not allowing people who aren’t my homies or Columbia people in."
On Thursday, Reider told the Journal that most university officials were uncomfortable with Pith's continued operation.
"I had university administrators on my wait list that were totally trying to come through,” he said. “They’d also be, like, 'please find a new place.'"
Reider told the Journal that his sublease was supposed to run through Aug. 31, despite the fact that he is graduating later this month. He added that he hopes to serve a few last meals at Pith before finding work as a chef.
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