Cafe Edison: 1 Year Later

One year ago this week, after a mighty fight to save its life, the great Cafe Edison closed its doors. The Polish Tearoom, as it was lovingly known by its many fans on and off Broadway, had been in the Hotel Edison since 1980.



Last winter, the new owner of the hotel denied a lease renewal to Cafe Edison, despite passionate pleas from the Broadway community, magicians, local politicians--including Mayor Bill de Blasio--and thousands of fans who made our case via national and international news.

While the hotel owners originally claimed they would replace Cafe Edison with a "white-tablecloth" restaurant and a "name chef," they recently announced that a local mini-chain called Friedman's Lunch would be going in. "Just like the Cafe Edison," reported the Daily News in September, "the new restaurant is not some flashy, white-tablecloth type space... It’s a modest, family business." The real-estate broker on the deal told the paper, “It’s old-school, hearty good food. We must have gotten 50 offers but the landlord didn’t want big chains or celebrity chefs. They wanted something warm. This is going to be everything the Edison Cafe was--just a few decades later."

But Friedman's is not "just like" the Cafe Edison and it won't be "everything the Cafe Edison was."

While it might try to sound like one, Friedman's is not a family name, in case you thought it might be. Remarkably, according to DNAInfo, "The restaurant's name is a tribute to free-market economist Milton Friedman." Could anything be more apropos in this city destroyed by neoliberalization?

For your holiday listening pleasure, here's the Milton Friedman choir sharing the man's definition of a corporation:


via okieblog

Anyway, needless to say, many of us who fought like hell to save this truly authentic piece of New York feel betrayed by this news.


Conrad Strohl & NBC News: photo by Barbara Nassberg -- see the video here

I reached out yesterday to Cafe Edison family member Jordan Strohl. When we last heard from the Strohls, they were busy looking for a new location for the coffee shop. Jordan told me:

"It’s hard to fathom that it’s been a year to the day that the longest show on Broadway went dark. This is certainly not the outcome that my family and I wanted. It is a sad day for my family. I try to think about all the wonderful memories, customers, and stories that we had as our home remains dark! The business was a wonderful success story and spoke volumes about what my family stands for and who we are."

"In the past year we have looked at many places with an open mind and, unfortunately, nothing has panned out. As a result, we have turned our attention to finding a way to make some of our products available for customers. We have been actively engaged in working on our product line and believe there is a market for our food. Hopefully, we will have more announcements about that very soon."

"As for the recent news on Friedman’s taking the space, I hope it is an epic failure!"


Jackie Hoffman: Photo by Jennifer Leonard

The Strohl family continues to look for a new space where the Cafe Edison can rise again, bringing people together over authentic New York comfort food.

If you know of a place, or have any leads, please leave the information in the comments section here, or write to me directly at jeremoss at yahoo dot com. 

The fight to save Cafe Edison continues.



Previously:
News breaks about Cafe Edison's forced closure
Over 600 supporters come to our first of many Lunch Mobs
Local politicians and Mayor Bill de Blasio join the fight to Save Cafe Edison
Big rally and press conference at Cafe Edison
The last day announcement
Cafe Edison Closes

Garage

VANISHING

In case you missed the news, the Garage restaurant is closing.


via Brunch Upon a Time

Reader Elizabeth writes in that the last day is January 3. She says, "their rent was going to be hiked to $50k a month. So they are closing. I am heartsick. My friend George and I had Thanksgiving dinner there many times over the years, and loved hanging at the big beautiful wood bar and listening to jazz. No plans to try to reopen in NYC."

I don't know how long exactly Garage has been on Seventh Avenue in the Village, but I guess it's been about 20 years.

Originally a garage, the building has long been a home for jazz and theater--of one sort or another. Over 75 years ago, it was the Nut Club, a nightclub that hosted cockroach races.




cockroach racing (photo via GVSHP)

In the 1950s, it was jazz club The Pad and then Lower Basin Street, where Dave Brubeck played.

After jazz, the building housed live theater as the Sheridan Square Playhouse, home of the Circle Repertory from 1969 - 1994, when they moved to a larger space shortly before folding.

Today, Garage hosts jazz every night and specializes in a jazz brunch. There will only be a few of those left.


Cars on the wall of Garage

La Lunchonette's Last Days

You may recall that last fall I reported that La Lunchonette would be forced to close, thanks to the High Line Effect that is sweeping small businesses from Chelsea.

The 28-year-old restaurant hung on longer than expected, but now the last supper has been announced. La Lunchonette's final night will be this New Year's Eve. 

Owner Melva Max adds, "A ten story building will be erected, another 'starchitect' flexing their creative muscle along the old rail line."



After the High Line opened, Max's landlord’s phone didn't stop ringing, and it was always a real-estate developer on the other end. She told me, “My landlord’s not a bad guy, but how you can you say no to offers of $30 million?” 

She also noted, “The neighborhood is so gross now. It’s all tourists coming for the High Line. People always say, ‘But wasn’t it great for you?’ The High Line has been the cause of my demise.” 

Stop in before La Lunchonette is gone -- taking its delicious lamb sausages with it.

Pearl River Mart

This past spring, Crain's reported that Pearl River Mart, the excellent Asian emporium, would be forced to close at the end of the year due to an insane rent hike.

Now reader Andrea R. writes in with a final (ish) date. A friend who works in the store told her: "the closing date is around February 10."



Pearl River first opened in Chinatown in 1971. It has since moved twice, but this may be the end of it, due to sky-high rents all over the city. As Crain's reported, "Pearl River currently pays more than $100,000 a month for its shop, and rent would rise more than five times when the lease expires."

That's over $500,000 per month.

And this is why we need to #SaveNYC.

Nostalgia Train

Riding the Nostalgia Train sounds like something you do when you're lost in reverie and memory, pining for what used to be. If that's what it is, then many New Yorkers are casting backwards through time on Sundays this month, riding antique subway cars along the M Line, from Second Avenue to Queens Plaza and back again.

The people on the Nostalgia Train are a different breed.



Some come dressed in period costume, Depression-era hats and coats, shoes and neckties, dark lipstick shades of another epoch. These otherworldly anachronisms dance on the station platform to the music of a little swing band, the slick-haired singer crooning "Night and Day."

Others come in MTA paraphernalia, railfans dressed in t-shirts and knit winter caps proclaiming their favorite subway line. The F and the 6 are tops. One young man sits grinning, running through a near constant patter of conductor announcements. He's got the script down and compulsively, giddily recites its length and breadth. "This is Broadway-Lafayette," he calls out. "Transfer is available for the 6 train. Stand clear of the closing doors." Another young man, wearing an Amtrak t-shirt, holds his iPhone by the open door between the cars, audio recording the clickety-clack in the dark tunnel's roar.



Haloed by warm incandescent light bulbs, an older man stands and pontificates on the state of today's New York, city of yuppies, cell phones, and drunk Santas: "Is this the city you and I were raised in? It's become alien. I have no feeling for it anymore. It's scary!"

But no one listens. They'd rather pretend it's the past.

Retired motormen trade stories. Clasp hands. Greet each other warmly, saying, "Hey, I ain't seen your ugly mug for a hundred years."

Among the fanatics and nostalgics, other New Yorkers climb aboard, acting like the everyday subway riders they are--tired, bored, going to work, coming home from a long day already. They've got no time for reminiscence.



The Nostalgia Train doesn't sound or feel or smell like today's bright and whispery subway cars. Heavy in its bones, it broadcasts a loud symphony of sound, rattling and wheezing through the underworld. Inside, ceiling fans whiz overhead. The air is olive drab or else some shade of sea foam.

Open windows let in the smells of the tunnel, which shift from swampy organics to a fragrance you'd swear was burnt buttered toast.

Soot flies in and lands in your eye. In these old cars, you are not sheltered from the city. You are joined to it.



There is no stillness here. The rattan benches bounce your spine up and down as the jolting car keeps all bodies in motion.

But the best part comes when the train dives beneath the East River and launches forth to Queens. The driver lets out the throttle, like letting loose the reins of a horse, and the whole thing torpedoes ahead. It dives deeper, faster, jerking from side to side, shuddering in its bolts. A gritty wind blasts through the openings, strong enough to knock off a hat, if it tried.

In this unbridled speed, the riders are giddy. It is a relief to feel the city thrumming in your gut, to not be insulated from it, to not be held in some sterile, hospital-lit tube.

This feels real. This knocking around. This sucking down the filthy wind. This robust mechanical jolt.

This is New York.

Going Into Black Seed

One year ago, right about this time, DeRobertis' Pasticceria closed after the family opted to sell the building in increasingly hard times for small businesses. It had been on First Avenue in the East Village since 1904. Last week I shared the news that they opened a new shop, way out in Clifton, New Jersey. You can order their pastries online, but it won't bring back the feeling of sitting in their glorious cafe.

Going into Black Seed bagels won't bring it back, either.


Black Seed, photo via Eater


DeRobertis

As I do with all of my favorite places when they've been taken over and partly preserved by new owners, I forced myself to enter DeRobertis' replacement.

Stepping inside Black Seed, I was surprised by a sudden physical dysphoria. My stomach clenched, my head spun, my whole body trembled like a tuning fork. The cognitive dissonance of being in a space so intimately familiar, yet rendered utterly strange, was too much to bear.

The Black Seed people have kept many of DeRobertis' antique features, and I should be glad for that. It still has the tile walls and floor, the pistachio green back wall, the mirrors with their star-burst centers, but everything else is wrong, modernized and hipsterized, crammed with different people--the wrong people, people who never set foot in DeRobertis.

I hurried out, gasping for air, but vowed to get my bearings and go back another day.


Black Seed, photo via Eater


DeRobertis

On my next trip, I steeled myself, only felt slightly woozy, and ordered a bagel sandwich and coffee. The total came to over $15. I sat in a wide wooden booth made of "reclaimed sycamore" and stared at the floor, at the empty spot where a mobster's 1821 half dollar used to be.

I focused on what felt familiar and attempted to mentally exclude the rest. The extant details of the old cafe served as potent memory cues that helped to reconstruct a vision of how the space used to be. I began to relax. But the alien elements kept intruding and unsettled me again. The smells were wrong. The sounds were wrong. My psyche flipped back and forth between the old and the new, unmoored again by a cognitive dissonance, a locational unease. Where was I? Maybe this is like getting into a bed with a lover who's just returned from a Body Snatcher pod. The voice is the same, the face seems right, but you just know you're holding an alien in your arms--and it gives you the chills.

My sandwich, if such things are important to you, was tasty. I might order another. But it's not at all difficult to find a tasty sandwich in foodie-saturated Manhattan today. What is hard to find is authenticity, history, and a haimish environment.

Even when a space is preserved, once the soul has vacated, it won't ever be the same.

Where Ess-A-Bagel Was

Where Ess-A-Bagel once was, there is a Tal Bagels (since September) and, just this week, a Bank of America.



Ess-A-Bagel was here since 1976. They were forced to close this past spring, to much weeping and rending of garments.

Why put another bagel shop where there already was a hugely successful and beloved bagel shop? I have no idea. At least Tal uses the term "appetizing" on their sign, a word with an interesting history.

As for Bank of America, there's nothing appetizing about it.

Ess-A-Bagel plans to reopen a new shop just a little further south on First Avenue.