A Decade-Old NY Bakery Hacks All but Two Locations — And More Closings

Three years after New York’s first indoor dining shutdown, restaurants and bars continue to struggle. More than 4,500 have closed since the onset of the pandemic due to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Since it’s difficult to track restaurant and bar closings, experts say that number is likely much higher and will take years to fully assess.

Below, Eater is documenting the city’s permanent restaurant closures, including a cornerstone of Brooklyn’s pizza scene, a Manhattan music venue with borscht martinis, a stalwart in the affordable dumpling scene, and the city’s oldest cheese shop. If a restaurant or bar has closed in your neighborhood, let us know at ny@eater.com. This post will be updated regularly.

April 21

Carroll Gardens: G. Esposito & Sons Jersey Pork Store closes this month after a century on Court Street. The legendary butcher, one of the oldest still standing in Brooklyn, broke the news to customers in March in a sign posted on the front of the building. Employees at the shop declined to comment on the reason for the closure and messages to G. Esposito & Sons went unanswered. It closed on April 10.

Clinton Hill: Mexican restaurant Tarachi is done after three years in the neighborhood. The business celebrated its opening the same week as the city’s indoor dining shutdown due to the pandemic. It’s now marked as permanently closed on Google.

East Village: Mighty Quinn’s, the franchised barbecue chain that started with a stand at Smorgasburg over a decade ago has closed its original Manhattan storefront. Founders Micha Magid, Hugh Mangum, and Christos Gourmos announced the news in a post on Facebook: “While we wish to have been able to just keep our first restaurant in the system forever, many realities have made that path impractical.” The last day was April 9.

Greenwich Village: The popular Middle Eastern restaurant Moustache Pitza has relocated to 29 Seventh Avenue South, between Leroy and Morton streets, in the West Village. In June, the American model Bella Hadid shared on social media that the decades-old restaurant would be leaving its home in Greenwich Village over a dispute with its landlord. Restaurant manager Rakan Droubi confirmed the plans to relocate at the time.

Lower East Side: Mel, an acclaimed bakery on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, has closed. Owner Nora Allen announced the decision over Instagram earlier this month, teasing that the business would return at a new location down the line. “As things go in the city, buildings sell, and the wave of change never slows,” she wrote in the post’s caption. The bakery opened in 2020, finding fans with its breads and pastries made from house-milled grains. Its last day was April 9.

Noho: Manhattan’s popular outdoor sushi counter Sushi on Jones has closed its outpost at the Bowery Market after almost seven years, EV Grieve reports. This was the first location for the sushi stall, which drew fans for its 12-course omakase served in 30 minutes and spawned locations in the West Village, Hell’s Kitchen, on the Lower East Side, and London. The restaurant thanked customers for seven years of business at the year-round market, which opened on the corner of Bowery and Great Jones Street in 2016.

Park Slope, West Village, Williamsburg: Ovenly, the bakery chain with a handful of locations scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn, has closed all but two of its stores as the company allegedly changes hands. The local chain, which started in 2010, closed in Park Slope and Williamsburg at the end of March to focus on its locations in Greenpoint and Cobble Hill, a representative for the company confirmed by phone on Thursday afternoon. Ovenly’s West Village bakery, its only outpost left in Manhattan, has also closed. Employees working behind the counter in Greenpoint and Cobble Hill on Thursday say the chain was recently acquired by new owners, who made the decision to close the shops. Ovenly’s representative declined to comment on whether the company had changed ownership.

Ocean Hill: Love, Nelly, a Columbian bakery known for its empanadas, changed its name to Butter & Scotch Luncheonette at the start of the year, a revival of sorts for a boozy bakery the owners used to run in Crown Heights. The pivot was followed by an abrupt announcement that March would be the last month for the new Butter & Scotch, which recently appeared in a feature story about modern lunch counters on Eater.

Upper West Side: Quick-service dumpling shop DiDi Dumpling has closed on the Upper West Side after a short six months, West Side Rag reports. The restaurant has another location in the Flatiron, at 38 Lexington Avenue, at East 24th Street, that remains open.

Upper West Side: Taco Tavern, a Tex-Mex restaurant that operated under the name Barnacho until last year, has closed, according to I Love the Upper West Side. The business has been replaced by the Avenue, an Irish pub with a food menu influenced by the south on track to open next month.

April 7

Bensonhurst: Bensonhurst bagel shop Tasty Bagels closed on April 2 after 40 years in business, Brooklyn Paper reports. The bakery announced the closure in a post on social media. No reason was provided for the closure, but a lengthy caption reads, “All good things come to an end.”

Crown Heights: Ursula, a home for breakfast burritos and other New Mexican fare in Brooklyn, has moved on from the building it has operated out of for the last two-plus years. The restaurant closed at 724 Sterling Place, near Bedford Avenue, on April 2. It’s reopening at an expanded storefront in Bed-Stuy, planned for April 12.

Harlem: Uptown vegan restaurant Seasoned Vegan closed things out with a party on April 1. The restaurant, which has been operating from a storefront at 55 St. Nicholas Avenue, at West 113th Street, for the last nine years, will relocate to the East Village this spring with a focus on takeout and delivery, according to a spokesperson.

East Village: Captain Cookie & the Milk Man, a cookie company with locations in Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina, is calling it quits in New York City. “We have taken a step back from retail after our past year of serving East Village and Times Square,” a company spokesperson tells EV Grieve. The bakery opened on Broadway last April.

East Village: Is the Korean corn dog trend cooked? Two Hands, an early arrival in the imported food trend, has closed its original outpost on Avenue A. The storefront has been out of commission since late last month, when a note on the door blamed the closure on a “technical issue,” EV Grieve reports. A new awning with the words “Korean Street Foods” now hangs above the door. The closure comes less than a month after Oh K-Dog & Egg Toast, another Korean corn dog shop on St. Marks Place, closed after less than a year.

East Williamsburg: Neighborhood watering hole One Stop is done after 12 years, Greenpointers reports. The space is rebranding as a queer Irish pub called Mary’s Bar, a collaboration between the owners of One Stop and Ginger’s in Park Slope, which was Brooklyn’s “last remaining lesbian bar” as of 2021. There’s no reopening date yet.

Throgs Neck: Ice House Cafe, a popular Italian restaurant in the Bronx, was “forced to close” earlier this month after its licensing agreement at the Hammonds Cove Marina expired, News 12 reports. The restaurant, which had been operating along the waterfront for 20 years, claims that it was notified in March that it would need to close by April 1. The space was passed off to a higher bidder, the New York City Parks Department confirmed to News 12. A petition with more than 3,000 signatures failed to stop the closure.

Tribeca: L’Entree, a neighborhood cocktail bar so despised by its neighbors that its attempts to apply for a liquor license wound up in court, has closed. Owner Zak Normandin had been operating the bar, located in the back of a Church Street storefront, with a temporary beer and wine license since last fall. The space has since been returned to the building’s landlord, according to a notice on the door dated March 20.

West Village: It’s the end of an era for Jekyll and Hyde, the Halloween-themed bar that filed for bankruptcy last year over $7.5 million owed to creditors and another $1.5 million in unpaid rent. The bar with its own Wikipedia page shuttered in June 2022, and its liquor license was suspended last month, according to a notice posted on the front door by the State Liquor Authority; Google now lists the business as permanently closed.