Seems like anything that is not Chinese or simple flavors like Mogador or Veselka is closing. Just recently…
Foul Witch
Mama Fina
Foxface Natural (says temp, not sure what the deal is)
Cadence
Nai
Venhue
Many more
East Village has always been tricky. No tourist traffic and residents mainly young transplants. The only things that seem packed are bagel places, bakeries, and brunch places. Everything I liked pre pandemic is now gone.
Odessa, Kiev and Christina’s. I miss them all. 99 Miles to Philly. Benny’s. Mondo Kim’s. Venus Records. The Love Store. It’s been dying for a while.
Eh, people have been singing this song since I moved to Manhattan in 1983. Banh An Em, Superiority Burger and whatever that wine bar is that replaced Boulton and Watt are all thriving. Superbueno usually has a line outside. For every closed Brownie’s there is an open Lucinda’s. And on and on.
Man do I miss Brownies my label hosted so many of our shows there. I am never in the East Village these days, admittedly. Most of the things I liked are gone.
Waiting on line at the Kiev at 4am for blintz, perogie and kielbasa and eggs was def a thing. Haven’t been to B&H in ages, I need to get back.
You can find new things. For every place that I miss (CBGB, Mars Bar, 7A, The Lakeside Lounge), there’s another that’s either still there (2A, Pylos, the Horseshoe) or new and I like it (11th Street Bar, Jazba, Smithereens).
And it’s not as if the East Village is uniquely affected by change. Every neighborhood I’ve lived in (Morningside Heights, UWS, Chelsea, the Gray Area, LES) looks vastly different than it did when I was first there.
You are correct. Places come and go like everywhere else. But it always felt different here. Almost every single place I used to frequent during the last 10 years is now closed. Plenty of good ones still exist like Hearth, Somtum Der, and some opened recently. But you could and can see the writing on the wall on places that are a little more expensive for what they do like Harry and Ida’s, Martina. Spice Bros comes to mind. I would be surprised if they make it another year.
Ginny & I have a standing joke about this. My mother had a favorite line about “the stores on Kings Hiway aren’t what they used to be”. She repeated this regularly & was correct. “Her” familiar home had changed. The standing joke is that now Ginny & I find ourselves saying the same thing about the neighborhoods we’ve known, including our long time home in Bklyn Heights. Then we hear about Ridgewood & Greenpoint and think that my mother’s King’s Hiway is our Park Slope, East Village, etc and that, someday, folks will be bemoaning what Greenpoint has become.
was replaced by Foxface Natural.
And it’s certainly not limited to the city. I go back to the area I grew up in - now about twice the population as when I was a kid - and it’s like slipping in the multiverse. You know where the Quackenbush’s farm used to be? It’s all condos now!
I think we will look back at the era of the turn of the century between the 20th and 21st as a unique time when ambitious restaurants strove to serve stellar food at accessible prices. A combination of low rents and wages and other costs that allowed such places to flourish is over. The dining scene will breakout into another K shaped market. From my experience the high end places are jammed and thriving from a combination of expense accounts and people who have the funds to spend several hundred dollars without thinking about it. The rest are being mindful of their spending and cutting back. The local places with ambitious chefs will struggle as they’re squeezed between the two legs of the K.
rents, food cost and wage regulation are definitely taking their toll (not to mention what Covid did to the industry)
This thread got me thinking about places I knew when, decades ago, I’d be in the far east LES for more nefarious activities than eating. We all know that area is very different than it was in the 80s, so I was shocked to see that one of the places I remembered, CASA ADELA, is still in business and still run by the family.
The NYTiimes even raved about their rotisserie chickens in 2015. I remember the pernil as being so-so (I’ve never had a great version in a restaurant, even on the “highway of lechon,” near Guavate, but is Casa Adela they worth seeking out for their chicken if anyone finds themself nearby? (I’ve been meaning to check out Mary’s bakery on A for scones for a long time…)
Do you mean the Mary O’s? I’ve had the soda bread; it’ s pretty good (caveat: I’m not a huge fan of soda bread).
YES! Thank you!
Mary O’s!! I had not heard of her before but watched a food tv show (with Tony Shaloub) that highlights her bar and bakery and I want to try those scones. But a regular there told me I had to arrive very early or they would be sold out.
Do you know if you can buy the scones to take home, or are they sold only with butter and jam to consume there or soon after??
I’ve never had soda bread but wanted to try, and I do love scones: I had some really good ones from Orwasher’s, of all places!
I’m pretty sure you can get them to go. I’ve only been to Mary O’s a couple of times, and I think she started making the soda bread just for St. Patrick’s Day and then branched out. The first time I went in there, the bartender handed me a dish of banana pudding, because they’d just made banana pudding. I’m allergic to bananas, but I also hate to be rude, so I ate it and got a little itchy.
None of the boutique record stores have been replaced. They never will be. Nor will the live music venues be replaced by anything comparable. I lived in Williamsburg for a long time before it gentrified. It’s incomparable. Yes, it changed. Things always change. Not always for the better. Sometimes. But not always. People appreciate different things.
Maybe not replaced, but they certainly still exist.
As do plenty of live music venues, which I know, because I keep having to go see my friends’ bands play. I think your use of “comparable” signifies that you (like many others) are being governed by nostalgia. We romanticize a particular period in our lives mostly because of who we were, not because of what was actually there.
The welcome mat to New York should probably read “You should’ve been here 10 years ago, when this place was cool. Everything sucks now.”
I don’t know the EV well but even I can see the changes. Some are very bad. But there certainly are better restaurants than decades ago. And I remember when east of Avenue A was kind of a no-go zone for many who did not live there. There were lines in front of buildings but not for a seat at a table.
