[Kalina, 6/21/05.]
UPDATE: Matthew Hamilton, owner of Uovo, wrote us this morning to clarify his earlier comments. As it turns out, the Bruni language was not his, but rather a tipster taking licence. Blame is to be assigned as follows:
I blame the community board and the block association, even though having their support for a liquor license, it has been almost a year since we applied and it is because of them for the holdup. We truly believe that we could have made it with the help of alcohol sales. The blockade of issuing licenses to bars has hurt the restaurant business too. With today's rents, you can't survive without a full license unless you sell bad, cheap ass food and your rent is dirt cheap and that is even getting hard to do with the oil prices. I am not sure if the landlords in the area are aware of what is going on with CB3 and the SLA but, they need to get involved. You may see many more empty restaurants in the near future.---
Rumblings from last week were made painfully real earlier today, when the official Uovo mailing list received word of the East Village, egg-centric restaurant's demise:
After a long hard year and three months of running Uovo solo it is sad for me to inform everyone on the mailing list that we are closing. The summer was extreamly [sic] brutal for us and there is just no way for us to stay afloat in this economy and given our location we have never been that busy. Our overhead has exceeded ours sales. So thank you all for your support and i will keep your email address for just awhile longer to let you know where i will be working.Where Bruni comes in, just a click away.Uovo was a sweet neighborhood restaurant -- sometimes the food and service was spotty, but it was honest and smart food, and a league better than some of the rote places that push the cocktails and cocktail waitresses.
Forgive the tangent, but I can't help but point a finger at Bruni, a guy who doesn't know how to review a restaurant without a press release. UovoRight or wrong, let the kids vent, no?
should've gotten one star, a nod to its intentions and accomplishments, and
it should've been put on the map. Instead Bruni goes to Japonias -- and
gives it a bad review -- because he never bothers to discover restaurants on
his own.
· Uovo, Here She Comes [DailyCandy]