Bar Sardine, a cozy bistro in Manhattan’s West Village, has been Maggie Kennelly’s go-to spot since she moved to New York three years ago. It’s where she introduced her boyfriend to her father for the first time. It’s where she and her friends always went for Sunday brunch, sitting at “the sunny booth” by the large windows.
One day, while waiting for a table, she was able to take a peek at the host’s tablet, where there were some notes about her in the reservation system. “It said, ‘She’s very friendly, she likes hugs, her boyfriend lives in Chicago, and she’s trying to get him to move,’” she recalled, laughing. “I guess I’m a regular.”
Last week, Maggie Kennelly had her final meal at Bar Sardine. The restaurant announced that it would be closing at the end of August.
She ordered the usual: a Fedora burger and fries. One of the waiters brought over Champagne to mark the occasion. For over two hours that night, she and her boyfriend savored their last dinner at Sardine.
Ms. Kennelly is one of many New Yorkers saying goodbye to their favorite restaurants, about 1,200 of which have closed since March 1, according to a new report from the city. Many of these places have been staples to New Yorkers for decades, like La Caridad 78, the Cuban-Chinese diner on the Upper West Side, or the Cupping Room Cafe in SoHo. Some shut down for the pandemic and simply never opened again. Others re-emerged for a short time over the summer, giving outdoor dining a shot — and a chance for their most loyal customers to say goodbye — before throwing in the towel.
And while the final meal is an occasion to cherish, it’s also just sad.
“It’s very morbid,” said Gabi Levy, about the final days of Bali Kitchen, an Indonesian restaurant in the East Village that will close for good at the end of August.
Ms. Levy, 28, was introduced to Bali Kitchen a year and a half ago on her birthday, when she tried mie goreng, a fried noodle dish, and beef rendang, a spicy stew, for the first time. “It’s cooked overnight for sometimes two days, and once it is settled, it is refried in coconut oil and milk,” she said of the stew. “It blew my mind.” She loved the food so much she took a cooking class with the owner. A few times during the shutdown this spring she took an Uber from her apartment in Harlem down to the small restaurant on East 4th Street to get takeout.
Since she found out about Bali Kitchen’s imminent closing, she’s gone there three times. But the experience has been different.
Although the restaurant stopped regular service on Aug. 1, it has opened every weekend since, offering improvisational meals, presumably made with what’s left in the kitchen. “We can’t really order our favorite foods because he is trying to get rid of all the leftover stocks, so the only dish you can buy is a hodgepodge of everything on the menu,” Ms. Levy said.
But her loyalty is unwavering. “If they put 17 things in front of me,” she said, “I’ll buy all of them.”
Ms. Levy also feels like this is one of her last chances to eat Indonesian food, as restaurants like Bali Kitchen are becoming harder to find in the city these days, she said. “It’s not like sushi where you can just go somewhere else.”
Some restaurants actually experienced an uptick in business after announcing their closures.
88 Lan Zhou, a famed dumpling restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was supposed to close on Aug. 15. But when it stopped customer service, it continued to sell its frozen dumplings — a bag of 50 costs $14. Sales were so successful that the restaurant announced on Instagram last week that it was pushing back its closing date.
Andrea Glass, 23, a graduate student in fashion marketing, has been trying to buy as many dumplings as possible. “It makes me happy that I can help support them through this difficult time,” she said. “I have been trying to fight myself to not eat them for every meal.”
Even New Yorkers who have moved away are returning to say goodbye to their favorite restaurants.
Matthew Kepnes, a travel writer, remembers the day, seven years ago, when he discovered Yuba, a no-frills sushi place in the East Village. “It was 5 o’clock, and it was way too early for dinner, but I was hungry,” he said. “The restaurant was just opening, so I went in, sat down,” he recalled. He ordered a crab roll with jalapeños and lemon. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’”
From that moment on, Yuba was his place. “I hated my roommate, so whenever I needed to get out of the house I would go and chill for a couple of hours and read a book,” said Mr. Kepnes, 39. “I became Facebook friends with the owner. They know my order. It was never full for me, they would always find a spot.” He went at least three times a week, he said.
In late July, Mr. Kepnes, who now lives in Austin, Tex., passed through New York on a work trip (he had been in Massachusetts before so he didn’t have to quarantine). One of his first stops was to Yuba, which had recently announced it would be closing on Aug. 14.
“It was a stroke of luck that I happened to be back before they closed,” he said. “I would have been really, really sad.”
Fellow restaurateurs, too, are making their own pilgrimages.
Jamie Erickson, 37, who runs a catering company and cafe called Poppy’s, made sure to stop by the Good Fork, a restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn, run by the chef and cookbook author Sohui Kim, on its last day of service.
“I took a walk down Van Brunt Street with my daughter in the stroller and enjoyed Sohui’s famous pork-and-chive dumplings, and crispy tofu with kimchi and fried eggs,” she said.
“I will dream of those dumplings.”
