Fatima Malik

The storm has claimed one of its first victims: S’mac, on East 12th Street. The city’s most popular delivery joint (per Delivery.com) stopped taking orders a little over half an hour ago. “We’re closing because of the weather,” an employee told The Local. Next door, Motorino is still delivering, but telling customers to expect waits of 45 minutes to an hour. And on the same block, John’s of 12th Street is only delivering to a limited radius. The wait is also “at least 45 minutes” at Grand Sichuan.

As reported earlier today, Luke’s Lobsters tweeted that it was suspending delivery. And Katz’s Deli, which just recently started delivering, tells us it too has chained up its bikes.

Earlier this evening, Seamless, the popular online-ordering site, sent out an alert to customers: “Please be patient with your orders and stay safe!”

Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else we called said they were still delivering tonight: Blue Nine, El Camion, La Lucha, La Palapa, Rai Rai Ken, Sidewalk Cafe, Stromboli, The Smith, Veselka and Odessa.

Enjoy ’em while they’re still on wheels, and tip well.

Lila Selim

Lila Selim Christine Huynh

Casa Gusto has now opened on Avenue A, selling Venchi chocolate, macarons (look out, Macaron Parlour), and eight flavors of gelato, all imported from Italy. Christine Huynh, who previously ran a business importing greeting cards with her husband, says she is a major food lover, and has always dreamed of opening a shop where she could sell exactly what she likes to eat.

Asked if she was worried about potential “dessert overload” in the neighborhood, Ms. Huynh, a Staten Island resident, said people have different tastes and preferences, and the quality of her sweets will make her stand out.

Casa Gusto will be open from noon to 9 p.m. during the week, and until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. When the weather warms up, Ms. Huynh plans to open later and expand her gelato selection.

Casa Gusto, 199 Avenue A, near East 12th Street.

Daniel Maurer

The Bowery’s latest nightspot is a nod to a steakhouse that used to be in Chinatown.

When Christina Chin discovered that the Orange Valve was closing and the storefront underneath her apartment of 12 years was becoming available, she approached her landlord about the space.

Her idea, hit upon while she was leafing through a family photo album, was to open a bar that nodded to the Original Wise Men, the “meat and martini bar” that her parents opened on the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets after they emigrated from China in 1969. The bar, said Ms. Chin, got a “mix of fashionable Chinese people in the ’70s and whiteys.”

Yesterday she opened Wise Men, a quirky cocktail bar that nods to its Chinatown predecessor via a “Kobe-beef meat mural” (an image of beef manipulated to resemble flock wallpaper), a marbled bar, and, of course, steak on the menu of small plates, served till 3 a.m. on weekends. The bar’s façade is a blown-up photo of Ms. Chin’s parents celebrating the Original Wise Men’s opening.
Read more, and see the menu…

Samantha Balaban

Three months after Sandy struck, The Sunburnt Cow still hasn’t restarted its dinner service, and is offering only weekend brunch. Its manager, Matilda Boland, told The Local she hopes the Australian spot will be fully operational “by the time it’s warm out.”

While most of its neighbors on Avenue C are back up to full capacity, the Cow was forced to shut its doors for a month when Con Edison turned off its gas because of safety concerns, said Ms. Boland. Then it had to rewire its building, which is over 100 years old. It’s still in the process of replacing damaged equipment.

Meanwhile, state senator Daniel Squadron has urged the quick passage of the NYC Hurricane Sandy Assessment Act, a bill initiated by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The act, if passed, would provide property tax reduction to home and business owners commensurate to the damage done during Sandy.

“Around our city, New Yorkers are still struggling to rebuild their homes and businesses in the wake of Sandy’s catastrophic damage,” said Senator Squadron in a press release. “By providing tax relief to New Yorkers whose property was severely impacted by Sandy, our bill will allow them — and our city — to rebuild and again thrive.”

Are you still struggling after Sandy? Tell us about it.

Last week, Billy Leroy told The Local that his antiques shop might reopen on a side street, away from “yuppies asking stupid questions.”

Around the corner from where his tent once stood, Olde Good Things is now courting that clientele. The shop has quietly started selling “architectural antiques” on the Bowery.

Bob Johnston, one of its owners, knows his average shopper isn’t the punk rocker of yore. “It’s a very upscale, conservative crowd here, surprisingly, that I found, for the Lower East Side, it’s changed quite a bit,” he told The Local. “It’s not so much the bohemian style of yesteryear. It’s lost a lot of the grit. We can still bring some grit here but we’re trying not to do that.”
Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Thought after-hours clubs were taking a dirt nap? Thought illegal speakeasies were just for those crazy kids over in Brooklyn? Think again. On the outskirts of the East Village, the after-hours tradition is still going strong.

We don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun here (we’ve been accused of that in the past), so we’ll keep this vague. But rest assured there’s a place where, at 5 a.m., you can bang on the door and a bouncer will appear. He’ll tell you to step inside, charge you $10, and direct you down the stairs into a narrow, brick-walled lair where DJs pump out house and techno. In a crowd several dozen strong, you’ll see couples making out, boys smoking e-cigarettes (and regular cigarettes), and girls ducking into the bathroom two at a time. But mostly people are dancing and drinking into the wee hours.

How wee? Well, the bartender who was serving drinks at 5:30 a.m. Saturday said the party goes till 6 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. (That bartender didn’t know he was talking to a reporter.)

When the bouncer let us out by directing us up a dingy stairwell and through a metal gate (the bar’s service entrance), he said, “Have a good night, and do not stand by that door.” The door is not inconspicuously located, you see: when we stepped out onto the strangely quiet streets of the East Village (even South Brooklyn Pizza and Stromboli were closed), a police car was right there at the intersection.

This is no fly-by-night operation: we first caught wind of the place last spring and have heard about it from two people since then. Feel free to guess the location. We won’t confirm or deny.

Daniel Maurer

Not only is “handmade ice cream” coming to First Avenue and frozen yogurt coming to Second Avenue, but it looks like gelato is bound for 199 Avenue A. The sign for Casa Gusto, near East 12th Street, promises macarons and chocolate as well.

Speaking of forthcoming sweets spots, Wafels and Dinges posted a photo from inside its forthcoming cafe on Avenue B: it seems a new item, galettes, is in the works.

Dana Varinsky Clemente Soto Velez.

Community Board 3 has voted against supporting a beer-and-wine license renewal for The Suffolk, the bar that has been fighting to stay in the lobby of the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center. Now Drew Figueroa, the bar’s owner, is crying corruption: he says C.B. 3 shouldn’t have let a board member who also happens to be the cultural center’s executive director participate in discussions about the license application.

Jan Hanvik, the CSV center’s executive director, also serves as chair of Community Board 3’s subcommittee on the arts and cultural affairs. During two meetings of C.B. 3’s liquor licensing committee, he strongly opposed Mr. Figueroa’s application and accused The Suffolk of creating a “laundry list” of problems for the city-owned cultural center, including accepting fake IDs from minors, stirring incidents of violence and prompting numerous noise complaints from neighbors.

Mr. Hanvik recused himself when the full board cast a final vote on the matter last week. “But Community Board 3’s integrity was compromised when it allowed Jan Hanvik to carry on as chair of its task force on arts and culture,” Mr. Figueroa said in a phone conversation with The Local. He accused Mr. Hanvik of being behind a series of “fraudulent 311 and 911 calls” involving noise complaints against his bar and performance space “when there were no scheduled events,” a charge previously made by a former security guard who testified for Mr. Figueroa during a December committee hearing.

Mr. Hanvik adamantly denied the allegation in a second committee hearing earlier this month. Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, said that ethics complaints like Mr. Figueroa’s are common in liquor license hearings and noted the city’s Conflict of Interest Board addresses those issues.

“This type of issue has come up more than once,” she told The Local in an e-mail. “When there is a conflict of interest, a board member must declare ‘present not voting’ and declare the conflict. However, it is explicitly stated that the board member may participate in discussion.” She added: “All community boards are very educated on this issue as it is a common issue and we know that a [board] member can participate with disclosure.” Read more…

The Village Scandal has been served with an eviction notice demanding it leave its East Seventh Street storefront by Monday. Now the 17-year-old hat shop’s owner, Wendy Barrett, is urging neighbors and supporters to call her landlord, the district attorney’s office, and even the judge.

Ms. Barrett, who has been involved in a complicated legal battle with A.J. Clarke Real Estate since 2004, is making the last-ditch effort “to support elementary justice, and the survival of the Village Scandal Hat Shop, which is now under attack by a criminal conspiracy of a corrupt managing agent,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Local today.

In November, Ms. Barrett’s lawyer, Jonathan Zimet, said the hat shop owner’s landlord claimed she owed close to $130,000 in back rent and real estate taxes. She vigorously disputed the amount, and sued her landlord and management company for $10 million in State Supreme Court. Read more…

Rendering of the bar.

Next month, The Immigrant will go before Community Board 3’s liquor licensing committee to present plans to expand into the space next-door to its current home on East Ninth Street, between First and Second Avenues.

A questionnaire submitted to the committee indicates The Immigrant Tap Room, which is taking over Change of Season’s former space at 341 East Ninth Street, will have 18 seats at four tables, plus an L-shaped front bar accommodating seven more.

In a letter to his block association, Jason Corey, the bar’s owner, says the tap room will likely offer eight draft beers. “The menu will consist of our usual cheese and meat plates, and we are also planning to add a few sandwich plates, as people are sometimes looking for more food than we can offer in the current Immigrant space,” Mr. Corey writes, adding that The Immigrant sources its bread from 9th St. Bakery, its fruit from Commodities Natural Market, and its meats from Russo’s.

If the food and drink menu submitted with the questionnaire is any indicator, the wine and beer bar will serve brews from the East Village’s own Alphabet City Brewery. Check it out below. It’s an early sample menu that’s subject to change, but it’ll give you some idea of what team Immigrant is thinking. Read more…

Ray Alvarez, the beloved owner of Ray’s Candy Store, turned 80 earlier this month. Last night, a few of the man’s friends, including his upstairs neighbor Francisco Valera, got some dancers from the New York School of Burlesque to donate their time and talents to the man whose milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard. Mr. Valera shared the above photos. Warning: some of them may not be appropriate for work — unless you work at a late-night soda fountain on Avenue A.

Happy birthday, Ray!

Daniel Maurer Left to right: Look beauty salon, 111 Convenience, ice cream shop, and bistro.

Daniel Maurer 111 Convenience

That ramen bar isn’t the only newcomer on First Avenue.

The strip will soon boast a couple of new eateries, a salon, and a convenience store.

Actually, the convenience store has already opened: Zahid Mahmood, who spoke with The Local a month ago, opened 111 Convenience Store on Monday. As you can see from our photo, the narrow space that used to house Hetal 111 First has been spiffed up, but the neighborhood’s old guard can rest assured that Mr. Mahmood, a native of Pakistan, is still carrying Polish magazines and newspapers. The coolers aren’t quite full yet: the state still hasn’t given its final blessing for beer and lottery-ticket sales.

Over at 59 First Avenue, Looks, a beauty salon, will open tomorrow, offering threading and waxing from $5 (for chin-hair removal) to $40 (for a back wax). Ear candeling is $30. Bikini waxes, facials, and body massages are also on offer.

Finally, on the block between St. Marks Place and East Ninth Street, a sign indicates that in the summer, “handmade ice cream” will come to the former home of Discount Cleaners, at number 137.

And right next door, in the same building, a bistro is taking over the former home of Tara Thai. A questionnaire submitted to Community Board 3’s liquor license committee, which will consider the new restaurant’s beer-and-wine application next month, indicates that Ivrose Bamba, the owner, plans to offer Mediterranean dishes such as lamb mignon with ratatouille, and salmon carpaccio. Sides will include curry couscous and forbidden rice.

Daniel MaurerVinny Vincenz, next to the incoming 2 Bros.

With a 2 Bros. Pizza set to open right next to it on First Avenue, Vinny Vincenz has dropped the price of its slice to a rock-bottom $1. Since then, business at the pizzeria, which turned ten earlier this month, has been up an estimated 500 percent. But Ari Elalan, the owner, isn’t happy about it.

Earlier today, Mr. Elalan stood behind the counter at Vinny Vincenz while, right next door, workers put the finishing touches on the incoming 2 Bros. He told The Local he wasn’t happy when he discovered that the wildly popular dollar-slice chain would be his neighbor, and he let its owner know about it: “I told him, ‘Don’t you know there’s a pizzeria over here next to you? He said, ‘I didn’t know.’ There’s a big sign outside and you didn’t know?”

Mr. Elalan decided to drop the price of his slice, formerly $2.50, to just $1, without changing the recipe. “I’m using the same size, same sauce, same cheese,” he said. “I’m not making no money on the slice, but listen, I have to compete.” The pizzaiolo, who said he was offering $1.25 slices back in 1987 when he helped run Pizza One in the West Village, believes there’s no comparison between his slice and the one at 2 Bros. After hearing that the chain was moving in, he tried one of the slices at the St. Marks Place original. “I took one bite and I threw it out,” he told The Local. “I said, ‘You know what? I don’t have to worry. If they’re going to use that slice I don’t have to worry.'” Read more…

Taco Town’s population just grew: Choza Taqueria has opened its second location at 124 MacDougal Street, a rep informs. The budding quick-service chain, from Matt Wagman and chef David Albiero of Murray Hill’s popular after-work spot PS450, started with a food kiosk at Municipal Plaza and opened its first storefront location in the Flatiron in 2010.

N.Y.U. students, consider it an alternative to the Chipotle on St. Marks Place? You can see the menu below.
Read more…

Melissa Hom

There can never be too much ice at a seafood spot with a popular raw bar. Danny Abrams, owner of The Mermaid Inn, estimates that every day his restaurant at 96 Second Avenue goes through significantly more than the 1,500 pounds his two ice machine hold collectively. “I can’t keep up,” he told The Local. “It’s never enough, especially on the busy nights and during happy hour.” Come March 23 the Mermaid will need quite a bit of ice: as previously mentioned, it’s celebrating its ten-year anniversary and the launch of weekend lunch. To find out how the restaurant has made it a decade, we chilled with its owner.

How many oysters do you sell a year roughly?

We sold probably $350,000 in just the East Village location in 2012. (There are Mermaid Inns also in the West Village and Upper West Side.)
Read more…

Nicole Guzzardi

Let’s douse some more cold water on those ridiculous rumors that Mermaid Inn is taking over the Candela Candela space, shall we? Turns out, the owners of the Cuban-Italian restaurant are remodeling it and turning into an organic Italian eatery.

Candela Candela officially closed its doors last Sunday, said owner Shai Zvibak. Mr. Zyibak, who also owns Hummus Shop in the Lower East Side, and his partner Marchello Assante will open a new spot, Organika. There, the pizza will be made from all organic ingredients, including dough made with white flour, kamut and favao.

“We are going to buy lots of the ingredients from farmers in upstate New York,” Mr. Zyibak said.

The eatery will have a full-sized bar offering organic wine and juices. Even the décor will be “green,” consisting of recycled wood and other items. The tables will be made from old bowling lanes.

“We are considering the ecologic situation of planet earth,” said Mr. Zvibak.

Organika is set to open in the next three weeks and hours of operation will be Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to midnight, and weekends 10 a.m. to 1 or 2 a.m.

Nicole Guzzardi

The storefront at 141 First Avenue that held the original location of Ramen Setagaya and then its replacement, Ramen Kuidouraku, and then yet another noodle joint, Ichiraku Ramen, is set to become (you guessed it!) another ramen joint.

This one, called Ippin, will be the first for owner Ejin Zen, who said the in-the-works menu would include ramen, tapas, beer and wine. The interior was being renovated earlier today: expect a massive shiny white bar-top and funky light fixtures hanging from the ceiling.

The otherwise tight-lipped Mr Zen said the restaurant is expected to open by the end of this month and hours of operation will be Monday to Sunday, 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Ichiraku Ramen closed here in April. “Business was bad,” owner Daniel Song told The Local.

Mermaid Inn’s TwitterYo, rumormongers: get a clue!

Last week the Mermaid Inn tweeted that it had some “pretty exciting news to share about the East Village” soon.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the neighborhood rumor mill kicked into high gear, as several readers told EV Grieve that the restaurant was expanding next-door. That blog’s post soon got picked up by food blogs, etc.

Now a representative of the restaurant tells us the good news “does not involve expansion — The Mermaid Inn East Village is set to launch its ‘Happiest Two Hours,’ an expansion on the current ‘Happy Hour and a Half.” So: starting Jan. 28, you can get $1 oysters from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Plus, the restaurant, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, is adding weekend lunch service, from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., with a one-hour “sunset menu” between lunch and dinner.

Speaking of changes in service, another fine spot for oysters, Calliope, announced on Facebook yesterday that it was launching breakfast as of 8 a.m. today. Great news if you’re a fan of La Colombe coffee and Shuna Lydon’s pastries (you’ll remember them from her recent days at Peels).