Crown Group's Midtown Restaurant Bill's Food & Drink to Close This Week

Four years ago, nostalgia-lovers and cocktail buffs mourned the loss of Bill's Gay Nineties. The 90-year-old piano bar closed a few months after the owners filed for bankruptcy, and John DeLucie and Sean Largotta — the duo behind The Lion and Crown — moved in. They quickly opened Bill's Food & Drink, a restaurant that looked like a J. Crew-designed version of Bill's Gay Nineties, with a menu of American comfort foods in the same vein as The Lion. And now, after a three-year run, that restaurant is closing its doors.

[Bill's Gay Nineties by Krieger]

DeLucie tells Eater: "Bill's is being sold to a fantastic operator who plans on reopening the restaurant shortly." The restaurant will close after service tomorrow afternoon. DeLucie and Largotta recently went through a much-publicized split. Their restaurants Crown and The Lion closed last year, and now DeLucie is preparing for the opening of his first project without his partners at Crown Group. Called Bedford & Co., it's slated to open in the Renwick Hotel later this month.