Some restaurants stick around for a year, others just a few months, and some are only open for a matter of days. Here's a list of 10 recent blink-and-you-missed-them super flop restaurants:
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10) Octavia's Porch: New York's first and last "global Jewish" restaurant. This Lower East Side project from Nikki Cascone sputtered out after only six months. Sad, too, because it's always nice to see a Top Chef alum trying their hand at something other than gourmet burgers or hot dogs. Super Flop Side Note: If you see a crazy deal on a coupon site for a restaurant that's only two months old, know that it's probably not long for this world. [Photo: Krieger]
9) Baotique: The name was inspired, the food was great, and the atmosphere was even kind of cool, but Baotique closed after just two months in business. Michael Huynh claims that the owners of Covet, the club which hosted the restaurant, never really got behind the project, and didn't want to open during the day to catch some of the Midtown lunch crowd, which this place would have needed to stay alive. On the bright side, this isn't actually the Bao restaurant with the shortest run — that honor goes to Chinito, which lasted only a handful of days before heading off to the Island of Forgotten Bao Concepts.
8) Brats: Dogs & Wieners: A sad story, because this concept seemed like it could have been a hit, and it would have been nice to see Klee Brasserie restaurateurs Daniel Angerer and Lori Mason gain some notoriety for something other than boob cheese and passive aggressive Groupon poetry. But the critics and the bloggers never loved the sausages at this casual restaurant, and some complained that even the best dishes were priced just a few dollars more than they should have been. Also: that name. Angerer and Mason pulled the plug on B:D&W after just eight months and moved their adjacent wine bar into the space, with plans to reopen the concept somewhere else. [Photo: Krieger]
7) K! Pizzacone: Lesson learned: New Yorkers don't want to pick and choose pizza toppings, Chipotle-style, and have them stuffed into weird, cone-shaped, par-baked crusts. Its status in the Super Flop Hall of Fame was secured by a scorcher of a review in the New Yorker, of all places. [Photo: Will Femia]
6) Hello Pasta: Lesson learned: New Yorkers don't want to pick and choose pasta toppings, Chipotle-style, and have them mixed into weird, par-cooked noodles. This chain was supposed to attack New York with about a dozen locations in the next few years, but its Midtown flagship folded after just ten months. The FiDi outpost is still open, but it seems unlikely that this concept will ever reach its original goal of becoming "the Starbucks or Pinkberry of pasta."
4 & 5): Bun & Co. and Patty & Bun: These two places may have fallen prey to "The Curse of the Ampersand and Bun," an obscure piece of New York restaurant lore, which states that any establishment with the word "bun" and an ampersand in its name is doomed for failure. Patty & Bun kicked the bucket right after its first anniversary, and Bun & Co. threw in the towel after just three months.
3) Ten Ten: Josh Eden's crack at neighborhood Chinese closed after four months, even though the food was supposed to be good, and the prices were just a tick higher than your average take-out joint. We actually have no idea why this place failed. Maybe it was the chalkboard menu, or perhaps people just confused it with New York's #1 source for local news, traffic, and weather.
2) SenseBowl: Midtown's one and only "Chipotle meets Momofuku" concept folded after six months. Probably because it wasn't an actual Chipotle/Momofuku mashup. That, of course, would do gangbusters in NYC. Steve, Dave, just something to think about. [Photo]
1) Soul Daddy: This Southern food restaurant slipped into the South Street Seaport under cover of night, did some business, and then quietly disappeared without a leaving trace, like some sort of Super Flop ninja. Obviously, it's embarrassing that the winner of NBC's America's Next Great Restaurant lasted only 30 days. More people probably went to the ANGR automat in Grand Central than Soul Daddy at the Seaport. Perhaps they should just rename the show America's Next One-Month Pop-Up.[Photo credit]
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