A Home for Stuffed Chinese Flatbread Winds to an End in Greenwich Village

Crop Circle, a Chinese restaurant known for its stuffed flatbreads, has called it quits after two years in Greenwich Village. The narrow storefront had been emptied of its furniture on Thursday afternoon, and Google indicates that the business has permanently closed.

The MacDougal Street restaurant offered a rare regional Chinese specialty: guokui, a stuffed flatbread prepared in a style that’s commonly found in Hubei. Doughs filled with a variety of meats, seafood, and preserved vegetables, were sprinkled with sesame seeds, stretched thin, and baked in a pair of cylindrical tandoor-style ovens that the restaurant imported from China. Eater critic Robert Sietsema praised the restaurant — especially the spicy beef and vegetarian flatbreads — in an early visit to the shop.

One of the restaurant’s biggest draws was that everything cost less than $9. Incongruously supplementing the flatbreads on the menu was a small collection of dim sum, as well as Italian and Chinese sodas.

The restaurant’s unusual name was meant to draw a line of similarity between guokui and crop circles. “Each Crop Circle is made of wheat in an original and creative pattern — just like the flatbread, Guokui,” the restaurant’s website reads.

Robert Sietsema/Eater NY