The owners of Bowery Beef, the sandwich shop inside the Bowery Poetry Club that closed during the summer, are returning to the neighborhood and opening a café at 125-127 First Avenue, near St. Marks Place. Ray LeMoine and Michael Herman are teaming up with Jamie Manza, an architect who also runs an upstate farm with his father, to open a restaurant that may source some of its ingredients from the farm, as well as shellfish from Gloucester, Mass. A former Bowery Beef customer, Mitch Zukor, will also be involved in the project.
Mr. Manza, 32, said that he and Mr. LeMoine, who is an East Village resident and a contributor to The Local, were previously business partners in a t-shirt company, started in 1999, that sold “Yankees Suck” shirts at Fenway Park. The business proved lucrative, and the duo traveled the world together – an experience that helped turn Mr. Manza into a confessed foodie.
“In 2000 we went to Paris,” he said. “We saw a restaurant where there was $100 lobster on the menu. We were standing outside this place and we were like, ‘Oh my God, there’s such a thing as $100 lobster. We have to eat $100 lobster from now on.”
Still, Mr. Manza said he wanted the as-yet unnamed café, where he will be the general manager, to be an “every-day eatery,” adding, “we want writers to be able to read and write and work in there during the day.” Read more…
Have you abandoned South Brooklyn Pizza ever since it stopped carrying Manhattan Special coffee soda on draft? (We’re assured it’ll return when the takeout parlor expands into a proper restaurant, possibly next month.) Well, there’s a new option just a block away: L’asso has opened its East Village outpost for dinner. Last month, The Local told you what to expect from the NoLIta transplant. Check back here shortly for interior shots as well as the menu, which features a Polish pie with kielbasa, pickles, and mustard oil.
After 28 years in the East Village, the owners of Polonia have closed shop after their landlord said she would more than triple their rent.
“I came here from Poland, my husband and I raised our children, and ran this business. We worked hard. I did everything I could,” Renata Jurczyk, who owns Polonia with her husband Jozef, said in Polish. “The landlords are killing small businesses in this neighborhood with the rent.”
The family had a small, informal gathering at Polonia last night with longtime customers. “After all these years, Polonia was important to the East Village,” said Ms. Jurczyk, 51. “When I told customers who have been coming here a long time that we’re closing, they started crying. They were Poles and non-Poles, and it was their second home.”
Ms. Jurczyk and her son Paul, 23, said they closed on Christmas Eve after the landlord, Ludmilla Lozowy, said she would raise their rent from $3,500 to $12,000 per month starting February 2012. “I tried to do something, but the landlord said we pay too little,” said Ms. Jurczyk. Read more…
Last Friday, the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop closed for the holiday season. Co-owners Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff are taking a break from the shop until it reopens Jan. 2, but the business partners won’t be taking a break from each other: the sultans of soft-serve have been a couple for six years.
Mr. Quint, who previously played the bassoon in various orchestras, said they stumbled into the ice cream business by accident. In 2008, he jumped on an opportunity to rent a used ice-cream truck through a friend.
“I was keeping my ears and eyes open for weird things to do,” he said. Mr. Petroff hopped on board both with moral support and by helping serve ice cream nights after work.
After two years on the truck and countless ice cream cones, the duo decided it was either time to find something new or expand. To their fans’ delight, they decided to open the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop this past September. Read more…
Keith Masco, the owner of B.A.D. Burger and once an outspoken critic of Community Board 3, will try to get approval for a beer and wine license at his restaurant at next month’s meetings. Mr. Masco’s reappearance before the board comes over a year after he tried to obtain a liquor license for a seafood restaurant and fishmonger at the same location. The board’s denial of his efforts resulted in Mr. Masco colorfully writing to EV Grieve, “I see no reason to bow to the communists at the community board.”
Other burger joints are on the just-released agenda, as well. BareBurger, which has been under construction for several months on Second Avenue will also push for a beer-wine license. Lastly, Five Napkin Burger on 14th Street will seek approval for a sidewalk cafe. The yet-to-open chain joint was previously a bodega.
And there’s one more location with a rocky history with the community board. Goat Town will ask the board for approval of an upgrade to its space on Fifth Street. The previous restaurant there, Butcher Bay, sued the board for denying an upgrade to its liquor license.
Lastly, new owners are apparently getting involved in the nightclub La Vie under undesirable circumstances: there was a knife-fight there on Thanksgiving.
Leave your mink scarf at home when you head out to Revision Lounge on Avenue B: the owner doesn’t allow any animal fur inside his bar. DNAInfo reports that doormen check the authenticity of patrons’ pelts and have infuriated a few of them in the process. Johnny Barounis, a vegetarian who also owns bars in the Lower East Side and Upper East Side with the same policy, said that “the fur thing is basically what I can do to help change some behavior.”
A judge fined the owners of IHOP $2,000 for soil on the roof of the restaurant and garbage bags and boxes obstructing an exit, court documents filed earlier this month show.
The ruling from the Environmental Control Board — a court that adjudicates violations to the building code — notes that the issues have been resolved. The soil on the roof, which may have come from a neglected rooftop garden, even resulted in a stop work order that has been lifted.
Meanwhile, Borough President Scott Stringer and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez sent a letter to the owner of the IHOP on 14th Street last month asking him to remedy issues regarding odors and noise from the restaurant’s rooftop equipment before going before a judge as “a good faith gesture to the community.” Read more…
Lit has announced that its holiday party, tomorrow at 9 p.m., will double as a benefit for Jonathan Toubin, the promoter, D.J., and “beloved fixture on the New York nightlife scene” (per East Village Radio) who was recently hospitalized in Portland, Ore. after being pinned by a taxi cab that crashed into his hotel room. We’ll add this to our holiday events calendar; in the meantime, see the flyer here.
Over a month after a sign by “Mosaic Man” Jim Power was hoisted over the storefront at 165 Avenue A, near Tenth Street, Tompkins Square Bagels has finally opened. Yesterday, owner Chris Pugliese told The Local that he planned to soft-open this morning.
Mr. Pugliese said he planned to sell vegan and gluten-free muffins from LifeThyme Natural Market, coffee from Stumptown, pastries from Balthazar and Bread Alone, and bread from Amy’s Bread and Hudson Bread. Gradually, the shop will start making more of its own products – everything from cheesecake to muffins and cupcakes – but for now, the in-house bakers are focused mainly on bagels and bialys. Read more…
Since the Amato Opera closed in 2009, it has been one of the more notable vacant buildings on the Bowery. The opera’s founder died yesterday of cancer, and the building is still empty and on the market for $6.5 million.
The broker of the building at 319 Bowery, Lauren Muss, said she planned to show the property twice today. “It’s definitely interesting to people, it’s just about a price,” Ms. Muss said. “They make offers, then they disappear.” Read more…
Interior photos: Noah Fecks. Exterior: Stephen Rex Brown.
The tavernkeepers behind Bua on St. Marks Place, Wilfie & Nell in the West Village, and Sweet Afton in Astoria are set to add another bar to their portfolio. Mark Gibson said that he planned to open The Wren at 344 Bowery (the space at the corner of Great Jones Street that was formerly Sala) tonight at 5 p.m.
When The Local stopped in about an hour ago, the team was still putting the space together. Mr. Gibson, 37, said The Wren – named after the Wren Day festival in Ireland, where his parents still live – would be “primarily a bar with great food,” and he described the food, which will be served until at least 1 a.m. nightly, as “classic pub food but pushing it a little further.” Read more…
Billy Leroy is meeting with his landlord tomorrow to start planning a huge farewell party before he moves his tented antique shop on the Bowery indoors. The last hurrah, he said, would come at the end of January.
“We’re planning a week-long event of music, poetry, singers, songwriters, and films. There’s going to be a huge lineup. It’s the end of the old Bowery,” Mr. Leroy told The Local today. Billy’s Antiques and Props is moving inside a two-story building its landlord, Tony Goldman, is erecting on the spot in late winter.
Mr. Leroy plans to meet with Mr. Goldman tomorrow afternoon. “Tony’s all for it,” said Mr. Leroy. “He’s very positive about it.”
“There’s no one left from the old Bowery days. It’s been yuppified,” he said.
In a YouTube video, musician and gaming enthusiast Jason C. Slaughter tours Video Games New York. You know! The store with the big Mario and Sonic in the display window? “As far as I know,” he says, “they have every PS2 game you could possibly want at this store.” Also for sale: a couple of N.S.F.W. “adult video game cartridges” by Atari.
On Saturday, Michael “Bao” Huynh, the chef-owner of Baoguette as well as the short-lived D.O.B. 111 – both on St. Marks Place – was putting the finishing touches on his latest endeavor. The notoriously prolific restaurateur told The Local that BaoBQ would open at 229 First Avenue, between 13th and 14th Streets, this Wednesday.
Mr. Huynh said he had designed his latest menu around three proteins – pork, beef, and chicken – that will be prepared in three ways. The Korean-style pork spare ribs, for instance, will be cooked in a smoker, as will the Laos-style beef jerky. The spicy Vietnamese-style chicken will be smoked over apple wood and then grilled over charcoal. The Thai-style rotisserie chicken will be grilled over wood. There will also be a few seafood dishes. Read more…
Daniel MaurerSign boards at Bar Kada and Maharlika on Sunday afternoon.
Maharlika has received its share of attention since it went from being a roving pop-up to a proper brick-and-mortar restaurant on First Avenue back in August. “Could it be that Filipino food, the underdog of Asian cuisines, is having its moment at last?”, asked The Times in its $25 and Under review. It would seem so: Recently, yet another Filipino pop-up quietly opened up in the East Village – on the very same block as Maharlika.
Few seem to have noticed, but last month, Bar Kada took up a Sunday residence at Ugly Kitchen at 103 First Avenue, just a few doors down from Maharlika between Sixth and Seventh Streets. The pop-up is the brainchild of Aris Tuazon, 37, who was until recently the chef at another nearby Filipino restaurant, Krystal’s Cafe 81. Yesterday, Mr. Tuazon said he planned to serve a Filipino menu at Ugly Kitchen every Sunday from 11 a.m. till midnight while he looked for a permanent space in the neighborhood. Read more…
Less than a month after Quantum Leap closed, its successor, Sao Mai, has opened at 203 First Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets. Ronny Nguyen, the executive chef, told The Local that he opened Saturday.
The chef, who migrated from South Vietnam in 1984, said he was eager to test the East Village waters after five years at Xe Lửa on Mulberry Street. “There are more American people here,” he said. “In Chinatown, there’s a restaurant on every corner. Over here, I don’t see many Vietnamese restaurants.” Read more…
And here you have it: After closing its First Avenue digs back in September, the Bean reopened today at 54 Second Avenue, on the corner of Third Street – down the block from its original home, where a Starbucks is still under construction. The Local showed you Jim Power’s sign going up last week; now click through our slideshow to see how the long vacant “Crazy Landlord” space was looking this morning. Not bad. The Bean will be open from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. daily; the menu remains the same, as you can see below. And don’t forget: A location at First Avenue and Ninth Street is also in the works. The Local spotted work going on there over the weekend. Read more…
The neighborhood’s top drag destination, Lucky Cheng’s, will be moving to a location near Times Square in the next six months, the owner revealed today.
Citing dwindling tourist traffic, Hayne Suthon, who has run the First Avenue cabaret restaurant since 1993, said that the operation would move to a more desirable location on 52nd Street.
“The phone used to ring off the hook, but as Times Square became a magnet for tourists — we just can’t get them down here,” said Ms. Suthon. “We’ve tried back flips, standing on our heads; they want to stay up there now.”
Ms. Suthon would not give an address for the new location because she had yet to sign a lease. But that didn’t keep her from singing the new space’s praises. If all goes as planned, the location will have two tiers of drag performances, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a more high-end menu and seating for around 350 people. (Yesterday, Grub Street reported that the current location was on the market.)
“Walking by the space, and looking at the people, we said, ‘This is our demographic,” Ms. Suthon said, later noting that her clientele is “the kind of customer that wants to go see ‘Jersey Boys,’ and tourists from Missouri.” The bachelorette and birthday partiers will just as easily go to Times Square as the East Village, she added. Read more…
As Noah Bernamoff, an owner of Mile End, expected might happen when The Local spoke to him before Tuesday’s meeting, Community Board 2’s S.L.A. Licensing Committee has voted, 8-0, to recommend that the State Liquor Authority deny the Boerum Hill delicatessen’s application for a beer-and-wine license at its forthcoming sandwich shop at 53 Bond Street.
“Generally, there were concerns about over-saturation in the area,” said C.B. 2 District Manager Bob Gormley, who attended the meeting. Mr. Gormley added, “There were some questions raised as to whether it was even allowable to have a liquor license at that location,” and said that the board is writing a letter to the Department of Buildings asking for clarification about the building’s zoning. Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownAngelica Kitchen at 300 East 12th Street.
Officers from the Ninth Precinct ordered the staff of the popular vegan restaurant, Angelica Kitchen, to stop allowing customers to bring their own bottles — but it’s not clear why.
The owner of the eatery, Leslie McEachern, said that the officers told a manager on Friday night to cease-and-desist B.Y.O.B. service, citing a complaint from Community Board 3. But the district manager of Community Board 3, Susan Stetzer, said she had never heard a complaint about the restaurant on 12th Street near Second Avenue since she took her job in 2004.
“I have no idea why they came, really,” said Ms. McEachern. “For now, we’re just complying with the order.” Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
Kathy Grayson
