Court Street Grocers Is Closing Its Sit-Down Restaurant After Three Years

The HiHi Room, the sit-down restaurant from Court Street Grocers owners Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, will close after brunch service on Sunday, September 3. The team announced the news on Instagram on Thursday afternoon: “We opened this little place just before the world shut down and it’s been a pretty wild ride since then.” The building will be changing hands, according to Finkelstein, although he declined to comment on the identity of the new owners. The HiHi Room opened in Boerum Hill in November 2019 with a menu that put pimento cheese, hush puppies, and other foods from the southeastern United States in the spotlight. Brooklyn Magazine first reported news of the closure.

A viral pizza shop expands in Manhattan

A pizzeria born out of the pandemic is opening its third location on Thursday, August 18. Unregular Pizza, a viral pizza shop that made headlines for trading slices of its pizza for homemade desserts, family recipes, and dance lessons, is opening at 14 E. 37th Street, between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue, in Midtown East, according to its publicist. In addition to bartered pizzas, the restaurant will sell fried lasagna and its signature square slices topped with whole bulbs of burrata.

A Brooklyn slice shop is opening a cocktail bar

Eavesdrop, a Greenpoint cocktail bar that opened in 2022, is teaming up with its neighbor, the slice shop Upside, to open Ask for Janice, a bar located at the back of the pizzeria. It aims to open this October at 640 Manhattan Avenue, at Bedford Avenue. — Emma Orlow, reporter