Do you know Bob Giraldi? Ask the question at a Hollywood cocktail party and the response will be,”Yes, the director?”

Ask at a New York City restaurant opening and the response will be, “Yes, the restaurant owner.”

Mr. Giraldi, whose 12th restaurant, the E.U., opens Friday, has created two successful careers, in film and restaurants. No other restaurateur has his work in the collections at the Museum of Modern Art or has won hundreds of Clio Awards. As he said last week at his neighborhood Italian spot BREADTribeca, “I like to be busy.”

“The restaurant business is a lot like the movie business,” Mr. Giraldi said. “Hollywood makes a lot of movies – some of the best in the world, but there are also a lot of bad movies.” The same can be said of the New York restaurant industry, but he’s hoping the E.U., a long time in the making, will be a hit.

In 2004, Mr. Giraldi met Jason Hennings, a young restaurateur who had just opened August in the West Village.They joined forces and created Diablo Royale last year and made plans for the E.U. The space at 235 E. 4th St. had been vacant for two years when Mr. Hennings discovered it. “I think this is the perfect restaurant for this part of town,” Mr. Hennings said. They began construction with design team AvroKo, hired a chef, and hoped to open in the fall of 2005.

But the Community Board threw a wrench in those plans when it posted notice of a nonapproval zone, where applicants situated on specific blocks in the East Village automatically will be denied liquor licenses for an indefinite period of time. The E.U. is in one of these areas, so the restaurant will open as BYOB. “I’ve never had to do BYOB, and I’m a former sommelier,” Mr. Hennings said. Slight adjustments have been made to their opening strategy, like a new menu of nonalcoholic cocktails, specialty European sodas such as ginger beers, and the offer to cellar wine for regulars.

“If they like the food,” chef Gwenael Le Pape said, “the next time they come back, they’ll know what they want to drink.” Mr. Le Pape describes the menu as European cuisine with modern accents. That translates into dishes like the croque madame, the French grilled cheese sandwich usually served with ham, bechamel sauce, and a fried egg on top. At the E.U., the ham is replaced by duck prosciutto and the egg on top is duck. Food is meant to be both familiar and unique. Prices are reasonable, with small plates from $5 to $9, appetizers from $7 to $11, and main courses from $13 to $26. Mr. Le Pape, who replaced Anne Burrell, spent the past three years as executive chef of the Les Halles group.

To date, the E.U. has cost $1 million: the initial building and startup costs, combined with six months of rent, utilities, and skeleton-crew salaries – without any business, the opening delayed because of battling over the liquor license.

The denial of a license has been per plexing and disheartening to Messrs. Giraldi and Hennings, given that other restaurants have been approved in the same time period, and both of them have existing licenses in the city without issue.

Mr. Giraldi has a strong restaurant record in New York City. The first, Positano, opened in 1983 and was open for a decade. The second, Jojo, opened in 1991 as the debut showcase for a young French chef named Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Mr. Giraldi maintains an interest in Jean-Georges, Vong (in New York, Hong Kong, and Chicago), the Lipstick Cafe, Mercer Kitchen, and, in Las Vegas, Prime. He also owns two locations of Gigino Trattoria (Greenwich Street and Wagner Park) and BREADTribeca, the two-star neighborhood Italian spot that just acquired a new executive chef, Sara Jenkins.

He supported the city’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics by directing two films for the campaign. “Dream Begins” was shown at the 2002 presentation that secured New York’s place as the American entry, with “A Peculiar City” closing the international presentation in Singapore last summer.

In the past two decades, Mr. Giraldi’s restaurant business has created a fourstar venue, Jean-Georges; employed thousands, and earned millions of dollars of revenue for the city. Many of his restaurants have evolved into neighborhood staples. All this makes him a curious target for Community Board 3’s public and ag gressive campaign to prevent new restaurants with liquor licenses from opening in the East Village.

Mr. Giraldi is not a traditional restaurateur in the front-of-the-house service sense, like Danny Meyer or Drew Nieporent. But he has an enthusiasm and love of good food, specifically the jovial family-style atmosphere created around a table. In the introduction to “Minnie’s Kitchen,” a 2000 cookbook by his mother, Minnie Giraldi, he wrote, “I remember never wanting to get up from that table. We ate, we talked, we cracked walnuts, we drank wine, we complained, but generally life was happy.”

In 2001, his two careers meshed when he directed the film “Dinner Rush,” starring Danny Aiello. The story takes place in one night at his Gigino Trattoria. His current film project is a screen version of playwright Alex Dinelaris’s “The Chaos Theories,” a dark comedy that takes place in the hottest restaurant on the coldest night of the year. (New York actors will be asked to forgo paychecks so all proceeds can go to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.)

As Mr. Giraldi prepares to open the E.U. on Friday, the last-minute scrambling provides a familiar rush. “We’re all trying hard now to get ready for the opening,” he said. “Always a dramatic finish – like a good movie.”

The European Union (the E.U.), 235 E. 4th St., between avenues A and B, 212-254-2900.