Tom Colicchio’s Craft is among the high-profile spots that will close this summer.
Photo: Tom Starkweather/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Here is an abbreviated list of restaurants that have either closed in the past few weeks or will shutter before the end of the month: Enrique Olvera’s Atla. Saint Theo’s in the West Village. Libertine, which is in the process of transforming into something else. Cozy Soup ’n’ Burger. Upper East Side institution Donohue’s. Loring Place. Agi’s Counter. Tom Colicchio’s Craft. Oh, and the Times Square Red Lobster.
These spots cover a wide spectrum of ambition and price points, but, according to the public statements by their owners, the reasons for closing tend to be the same: It’s become too onerous and too expensive to run a full-service restaurant in New York City. As Loring Place chef and owner Dan Kluger told us earlier this week when asked if he’d consider reopening some version of his restaurant, “I’d love to do something like that at some point — but not in New York.”
No restaurant can last forever (except Peter Luger), and watching your favorite establishment close its doors for good is a New York rite of passage — RIP, Franny’s, I still think about your clam pizza once a week — but this wave of announced shutterings, coming in the cluster that they have, feels different.
It’s hardly a secret that the price of everything has exploded — Kluger says ConEd bills are 35 percent higher than they were pre-COVID, and insurance has nearly doubled — but we appear to have hit the limit on how much restaurants can charge to recoup those costs. Drinks for $25 and $50 or $60 entrées are so common that I barely blinked the other night at a $48 portion of white asparagus. Even a meal out at a “casual” restaurant is going to hover around $100 per person. How sustainable is that, really? I don’t know anyone who’d want to regularly spend the $500 required to go out somewhere “nice” a few times per week. As one operator (whose spot is still in business) tells me, “The difference between losing a little and losing a lot is a handful of covers.”
If costs for ownership stay high, prices at restaurants will have to stay high, too. Their dining rooms must remain full, so being fine is not enough: If owners can’t attract the right mix of Michelin inspectors and TikTok influencers to keep a steady flow of new customers coming through the door, this disheartening start to the summer is only going to get worse as the weather warms up and the high-earning regulars who can afford to keep places afloat head out of town until the fall.
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