Redd's Roster of Restaurants of the Old Weird New York

Went to Moondance all the time during high school / college years. They used to put cinnamon in their coffee. Also The dude who wrote Rent used to work there.

Favorite all time place was Jones Diner on Lafayette and great jones. Old Greek standalone place, booths on one side, counter on the other, sign for "HOT CHILLY $2.95" written on a paper plate above the grill, owner taking your order and yelling "gimme a cheese deluxe!" Now of course it's a parking lot or condos or whatever. Fuck Manhattan

Another one I miss a lot, Roetelle A.G., 126 East 7th Street (East Village, obv) mostly Swiss, but with German, Italian and French thrown in as well- didn't they have little country shapes on the map to indicate which cuisine it came from. Loved the spätzle and the sauerbraten. Looks like she a few years ago she opened a place called Heartbreak on Second Avenue that didn't fare too well.

― Tarzan v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs

Definitely ate at Roetelle A.G. more than a couple of times, though I never would've recalled the name

Another place I loved was the German restaurant Silver Swan on E. 20th St.

The Silver Swan closed? Ugh. When? Looks like 2008. I used to go there with some friends who had a tradition of meeting there for the holidays a little before Christmas.

It's extra sad because there's not even another restaurant like the Silver Swan, as far as I know.

NYC dining is really weird, because you might frequent a place at a certain point in time and then forget about it for ten years and then one day you think of it again and your'e surprised to hear it closed years ago. Or alternately, you're stunned to find out a place you used to frequent back in the day is still in business.

Yes, exactly. That is pretty much why I started this thread, since I had forgotten a lot since I hadn't been to many of these places in a decade or two and was trying to fight back a little to preserve the last shreds of remaining memory. Maybe the grass is greener, but whenever I have managed to get over to Paris, I usually find a good many places are still in the same place, still going strong as far as I can tell, perhaps with several familiar faces among the staff.

Old time conveniently located West Village destination:

Jimmy Day's/ Boxer's, 190 W 4th, Corner Barrow, therefore lots of windows.

Seems to have recently been something called Oliver's City Tavern which is also closed.

Place I can't really find any mention of- except in a long unedited list at http://www.marinersguide.com/regions/greatlakes/newyork.ny/restaurants.html

Butler's, 145 Fulton Street (Financial District)

Old school cafeteria steam table place, excellent for lunch. Used to get a roast beef hero w/ gravy and a side of cheese fries, iirc.

I wonder why a lot of these places I miss are French. There was also L'Acajou, kind of a diner but one with great French food, on W. 19th St. where the tapas joint Boqueria is now. I remember the French lady who owned the place, she had a weird kind of tattoo where one of her ears was completely colored green.

Um, it's perhaps a cliche, but think French places really do have a lot of personality and ambience in addition to the culture of cuisine.

Speaking of which, trying to remember the small French cafe on Sullivan or Thompson maybe there were two branches, where you would go to get a classic cafe au lait and croque-monsieur. For all I know it is still there.

if we can expand to bars that served food and little cafes

Cafe La Fortuna on 71st off Columbus
All State Cafe on 72nd near West End Ave
P & G on 73rd and Amsterdam

I miss the Upper West Side of the 70s and 80s i guess

I remember the Silver Swan, had an office party there that was a crazy drunken affair as all office parties should be

Please feel free to expand.

Can't find or remember croque-monsieur place yet.

Did come across this list which has a few of these places including one I never really went to but I have seen is closed recently

Mezzogiorno, 195 Spring Street at Sullivan (Soho)

Kiev was the first place I ever ate at in NYC. Allen Ginsberg was eating at the table next to me

Such as

Still there, used to be reasonably reliable, haven't set foot in for years:

French Roast, 78 West 11 (West Village)

anyone remember "Top of the Sixes" at 666 5th Ave
I went there a couple of times in the early 90s when it was on its last legs, looked really tired and stale but still had that crazy view

i adored the Kiev

Or

'ino, 21 Bedford Street, near Downing (West Village)

TIny panini place, seems to have been -one of the? -first in NYC, conveniently located around the block from the Film Forum.

Celebrity sighting: Marisa Tomei.

Kiev was the first place I ever ate at in NYC. Allen Ginsberg was eating at the table next to me

Good details! I need to add celebrity sightings when I post, if remembered

And of course, that being my first NYC meal, I thought, "this is what always happens in New York, you walk into a random diner and there's a famous person eating next to you." And then nothing like that happened to me again for years.

(But I have dined next to Steve Buscemi in Brooklyn, and Mary Harron - director of American Psycho - at Flea Market Café).

(that was xp)

Yes, of course Top of the Sixes was lots of fun, thanks for reminding, barely remember.

Also have dim memory of some little cafe, perhaps burgers a specialty nestled deep inside of a hotel or office building perhaps in the same vicinity.

Is Cafe Reggio too iconic for this thread? I was there not too long ago.

Speaking of which, trying to remember the small French cafe on Sullivan or Thompson maybe there were two branches, where you would go to get a classic cafe au lait and croque-monsieur. For all I know it is still there

Country Café? I almost mentioned that one, it was on Thompson - that location is gone but there's a branch in the Financial District

or are we specifically talking about places no longer in existence

No not Country Cafe, it had a French name, had a wooden chair or chairs a la Van Gogh's NIght Cafe, I think, coffee served in authentic big white bowls.

Is Cafe Reggio too iconic for this thread? I was there not too long ago.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Monday, July 4, 2016 4:43 AM (38 seconds ago)

Still there:

Coffee Shop, 29 Union Square West
Celebrity sighting: David Lee Roth, sitting outside, people watching

Noho Star, 330 Lafayette Street
Celebrity sightings: Wallace Shawn (several times, a regular), Sheryl Crow, Maggie Cheung (outside, through the window, perhaps talking to Olivier Assayas, has seen the two of them some period of time before, perhaps a week or a month, at the Film Forum when they introduced Irma Vep)

How's Bayou in Tribeca (Greenwich maybe?) was big in the 80s when Cajun was an actual thing, went there often in the late 80s.
Ludlow Street Cafe was more of a 90s thing for me

Mezzogiorno, 195 Spring Street at Sullivan (Soho)

This place was good, but really overpriced. For me it goes in the category of places I assumed were still open even though I haven't eaten there in ten years.

Never actually ate at Ludlow Street Cafe,the cuisine was South American or rather Central American I believe, but saw plenty of music there, even played there once, well on audition night at least.

I remember liking the food there but I couldn't tell you a thing about it now

Provence, 38 Macdougal Street, near Prince.

Original owner sold around 2006, new owners reopened in 2007, closed a year or two later. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/dining/reviews/13rest.html

Trying to remember name of French bistro sort of catty-corner from it across 6th, drawing a blank.

OK, celeb sightings at places that have been there since before 1990:

Saw Patti Smith eating outside at Da Silvano on 6th Ave., although I think that's nothing special since she ate there frequently

Ate next to Gerard Malanga at Lucien at 1st and 1st, and Taylor Mead at the same place on a different occasion

just remembered Lucky Strike as another place I liked, name didn't register at first but knew from it's location on the map. this is such a weird exercise in haziness but nice all the same

No not Country Cafe, it had a French name, had a wooden chair or chairs a la Van Gogh's NIght Cafe, I think, coffee served in authentic big white bowls

Bistro Les Amis? Still there, I'm surprised to see

This would be a good time to ask if anyone knows the name of a red sauce italian place on Lex maybe around 61st that closed several years ago. Had famous zebra-print wallpaper. My old and recently deceased boss took me there a few times before it closed, and I ate a table over from Sigourney Weaver one of the times.

I believe it was a somewhat famous place locally, eulogized by Gay Talese in the NYer.

Oh wait, figured it out once I remembered the Gay Talese connect. It was called Gino.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/31/basta

The zebra-print wallpaper of Gino is now on the walls of a bar called Fifth Estate in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Oh huh. For some reason I thought the Sprinkles that was moving into the space was keeping it. Maybe they didn't keep all of it.

Ludlow Street Cafe had a great thing going on Monday night when a band called Beat Rodeo had a residency. A Minneapolis local legend named Steve Almaas who had been in one of their original punk bands, The Suicide Commandos had later formed Beat Rodeo. He was long gone from this band by time I am talking about although he seemed to show up every once in a blue moon. Anyway the band would play lots of covers and would back up various other musicians they know whilst they played even more covers. They had a nice lineup with two guitars one of which was a Telecaster and a talented guy named Charlie or Charly Roth on keyboards, whose brother guitar player Adam Roth would come by sometimes and also sit in. Adam was diagnosed with bile duct cancer last October and passed in December. Early in his career he replaced Warren Zanes in the Del Fuegos and went on to back up lots of different people such as Garland Jeffries, Jim Carroll and his buddy Denis Leary (don't hold that against him) although I don't know if they ever made any music with their other buddy Matt Dillon. He had a longstanding gig at Manitoba's (99 Avenue B) in which he would play covers interspersed with genuinely hilarious 9/10 audience-bating 1/10 self-deprecating long-form between song banter., and would pass a jar around with slips of paper for audience members to write titles of songs upon. When the jar came back to him he would pull a piece of paper out of the jar, and attempt to play the song whose title was written thereupon. If you managed to beat him he would give you a prize, often a thrift store paperback iirc, whilst singing the words "come and get your prize" to the tune and riff of Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love."

Ah, Old Weird New York, Ah humanity!

The zebra-print wallpaper of Gino is now on the walls of a bar called Fifth Estate in Park Slope, Brooklyn

― Josefa, Monday, July 4, 2016 5:16 AM (7 minutes ago)

just remembered Lucky Strike as another place I liked,
Was really surprised that it is still there. One of the last times I went t here, if not the last time, was when I invited ilxor Casuistry to meet me there around 2005-2006 maybe, when he was home for a visit.

Bistro Les Amis? Still there, I'm surprised to see

I Tre Merli, 463 West Broadway, closed Memorial Day 2013. But I hardly ever went there, if I ever did at all, not sure why, maybe a wee bit too much Eurotrash, if I may, went to Amici Miei, 475 West Broadway, much more often, not sure when that closed.

Fifth Estate:

http://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/yn3J2usUyrnt8YJAh5uziA/o.jpg

Ah, thanks!

Haven't darkened the door of a McAnn's in years. Seems like they used to be everywhere, are there any left? Looks like there is one near the Port Authority on 8th. Is the menu still the same , I wonder. The Jackpot, The Swiss Alps?

Another digression before I lay me down to sleep:

RIP places we used to go to buy suits:
Gorsart
Moe Ginsburg
Sym's

Okay, one more: is the place on Jones -or was it Cornelia- between Bleecker and W 4th where the thing to get was a lobster roll still there?

So Caffe Reggio may still be okay, but looks like Caffe Vivaldi, 32 Jones Street, may be having rent issues. Reminds me that a few months ago I was on the subway on my way home and met a youngish French guitar player who looked just like a fresh-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo- complete with fedora!- who told me he had been performing at one of these places, presumably the latter.

those chain irish dives of yore like blarney stone were really some kind of window into a vanishing blue collar world by the time I ever stepped into one. good for a beer and corned beef/brisket sandwich if you worked at a place that didn't frown on daytime drinking
i just googled one i remembered from the financial district - the killarney rose -still there but looks a lot less divey than i remember

http://gothamist.com/2015/08/28/rip_blarney_stone_pub.php

Yup.

Ye Olde Tripple Inn, 263 W 54th Street. Classic red and white checked table cloth after work joint, w/ comedy performances!

http://felberfrolics.blogspot.com/2005/12/ye-olde-tripple-inn-is-closing-forever.html?m=1

With second-hand, not-mine celebrity sighting of Pete Shelley! https://smytii.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/gone-ny-ye-olde-tripple-inn/

The Saloon, Broadway and 64th, across the street from Lincoln Center. Big windows, lots of places to sit, a nice default place to go with good service, reasonable prices, decent food.
Celebrity sighting: Richard Belzer walking by, with his twin!

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/nydn-features/saloon-draws-tears-beers-article-1.477525

Sam Chinita, 176 Eighth Avenue
La Chinita Linda, 166 Eighth Avenue

Two Cuban-Chinese classics, in streamlined metallic settings that screamed "diner!"

Sun Lok Kee, Chinatown staple. Died in a fire in 2002, reborn on Main Street, Flushing as New Lok Kee only to perish for good six years later.
Popular dish: Singapore noodles

http://events.nytimes.com/mem/nycreview.html?res=9903E4DE113BF93AA35753C1A9649C8B63

love the comments in this article about UWS restaurant/bar Teacher's/Teacher's Too

http://www.westsiderag.com/2015/06/04/throwback-thursday-an-old-restaurant-sign-peeks-out-from-behind-mcdonalds-facade

I also posted upthread about the tapas bar Bar Carrera, which used to be on Macdougal and Houston until it became a Bar Veloce.

Were Aggie's and Nellie's and Bar Carrera and Bar Veloce all the same space?

...and then there was El Paso Spanish-Mexican on that same block, don't know if it's been discussed here

I used to live on Sullivan, and think often of the types of restaurants that just got stomped out of the area in the early 00s and definitely now feel like a kind of departed 90s city -- mostly Gus's (the Greek place) and a place on with locations on Sullivan and somewhere in the east village called ... Mama's, maybe? Non-great comfort food, but in this casual-nice take-out range that used to be everywhere and blinked out rapidly. And then there was Esperanto on Macdougal, which was like the last 90s-style coffeehouse to limp its way a good distance into the 21st century

xpost and yes, El Paso was FANTASTIC just for the sheer archaic vibe

Were Aggie's and Nellie's and Bar Carrera and Bar Veloce all the same space?

Seems to be a pizzeria now, Song’E Napule

Unless the pizzeria and Bar Veloce share the same address

They do —- adjacent spaces. (Actually Song e Napule now has two storefronts on that same block)

not weird mostly, but appropriate for here:

https://www.grubstreet.com/article/best-nyc-restaurants-social-history-new-york.html

Perfectly apropos, thanks!

Still feel very lucky i can say i ate at florent

Ha yeah

Had no idea Lavagna was still in business. "Named after the Italian word for lasagna," according to that piece. I hope that's a joke.

A long time East Villager told me that the only restaurants in that neighborhood worth a damn are Lucien, Emilio's Ballato (technically in Nolita), and Miss Lily's. I don't know Jamaican, so I can't vouch for the latter, but Lucien and Ballato are the ones I gravitate to when I'm in the area and get my full endorsement.

Sorry, that Lavagna quote was from a different piece, not the Grub Street one linked above

Miss lily’s bangs but it is totally a scene. Ur better off going to crown heights or PLG if u actually want to eat

I had a weird food flashback recently to a Chinese spot on La Guardia Place that I loved for their noodle soups. Think it was called No. 1 Son (yikes)?

Re: Aggie's -- yeah I loved it as well. Mentioned it earlier in the thread.

Lucien the

(sorry - hit Return too soon)

Lucien the only E Village place I care to visit whenever back in NYC and if there's a hankering. O

I worked across from Florent for a few years and that was our lunch spot, then pre club spot in the early 00's. Spent the night of the blackout sitting out front with Florent plying everyone with free drinks and food ("It's going to spoil!"). Will never happen again.

Geez I should reread my previous posts in this thread. Posted just about the same thing re: Florent - only with added unnecessary information - eight years ago. Old much?

Ha, I remembered your previous post. But it's okay, who reads old posts these days anyway?

Eight years a decent enough interval between reposts.

Repost realization is a badge of honor

Ha, yes exactly that!

Also, if you had posted a substantially altered version of the same story that would actually have been somewhat disconcerting, but otherwise it's fine.