sandr085

I thought, by finally dining at The Famous Oyster Bar, I might crack this mystery of a restaurant, which has dumbfounded me for 25 years. Who owns it? How have they managed to hang on to this prime piece of real estate (54th Street and Seventh Avenue) for more than 50 years? Do they own the building? What's their secret? I have been able to uncover little on my own, because it seems that no one has ever written the story of the longstanding restaurant, in either newspaper or guidebook form. But I left discovering only that the place has been owned by the same Greek family since 1959 and has always been in the same location. There are no framed reviews or stories on the walls that would have told me more. And the waitresses are not forthcoming. After digging through newspaper archives and finding nothing about the Famous Oyster Bar prior to the 1980s (the results of health inspections, mainly), I begin to doubt the joint's story. Maybe it didn't open in 1959. Since the idea ...

Found among the comments on an item I wrote about the changes on Ludlow Street back in 2008, from the actual owner of the once-popular Ludlow Street Cafe: I owned The Ludlow Street Cafe and The Piano Store. I lived on Ludlow St. since 1967 and Jack Forster worked for me (Hi Jack) and was right about the guns and that it was NOT a job for a guy just out of college! (Hey Gaby we NEVER sold a piano? We sold lots of pianos!) Before gentrification got out of control it was fun. The block is now unbearable--not then. We had 3 bands a night 7 nights a week. The food was good and it was cheap. Girls would bend over garbage cans--we kept the backyard dark. Drug dealers provided something wanted--if they sold in the bathrooms they were fine. We had no C of O--our legal limit was 74. Fri/Sat night we'd have well over 200 people. They never bothered us for it but clocked us $1,500 for selling a beer to a cop who looked 30. The brunch was first-rate. It was all fun and firsts and I feel respon...

Just the Pepsi sign, I mean, not the awning. Bold. Simple. In Yorkville.