After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, the landmark Gotham Restaurant in New York City has closed permanently.
The Greenwich Village restaurant had already shuttered temporarily after managing partner Bret Csencsitz reported falling victim to a scam that he said targeted the restaurant’s payroll technology provider and resulted in the loss of about $45,000.
But a month later, in July, the restaurant filed for bankruptcy protection, saying the pandemic-related shutdown had cut deeply into revenue and the company fell behind on rent, taxes and other financial obligations. The restaurant owed nearly $484,000 in state taxes alone, for example.
Originally known as Gotham Bar & Grill, the restaurant, which opened in 1984, found fame under chef Alfred Portale, dubbed by The New York Times as the “I.M. Pei of contemporary American cooking,” who was known for his “skyscraper salads, towers of twirled pasta, high-rises of French fries and soaring desserts.”
In 2019, Portale left the restaurant, and opened the nearby Portale Restaurant. At Gotham, chef Victoria Blamey took over the kitchen. Later former pastry chef Ron Paprocki was named executive chef.
Csencsitz, who had been a GM at the restaurant, took ownership in 2021 after Gotham had closed for 18 months during the pandemic.
In August, the bankruptcy court trustee filed documents supporting the conversion of the Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation or be dismissed, saying the restaurant’s owners had not met deadlines for filing financial documents and seemed “unable to reorganize.”
Attempts to find funding to carry on apparently had fallen though, and the court said, “There is no viable business to rehabilitate,” according to court documents.
The bankruptcy case was dismissed in October.
On its website, Gotham posted simply: “Gotham at 12 East 12 Street is permanently closed. We thank you for an extraordinary 40 years.”
Csencsitz and his wife Cassandra, meanwhile, told Andrea Strong on the substack The Strong Buzz that they hope to reopen again at a different address.
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