Iconic Gotham Bar and Grill Says It’s Closed Again — For Now

The dining room on the last night of Gotham Bar and Grill in 2020.

A restaurant of many lives, the 40 year-old Greenwich Village icon Gotham Bar and Grill has shuttered again, this time in part because it lost $45,000 in a cyber-scam. Restaurant ownership tells Eater it intends for the closure to be temporary and only last through August, and has written on its website that it has closed operations for a “summer pause.”

This is the second shutter since 2020, with Gotham, at 12 E. 12th Street, at University Place, having “closed permanently” after 36 years in 2020, before reopening in 2021.

“Please note that now through July, we are pausing regular dining services for a creative refresh,” the statement on the website reads in part. “Stay tuned for special events and the resumption of bar service in the coming weeks. Thank you for continuing the Gotham journey.”

In the meantime, the restaurant is wrangling with its bank to try and recover stolen funds. Co-owners and husband-wife team Cassandra Csencsitz and Bret Csencsitz have been distraught over the loss, which, they say, pushed its hanging-on operation to have to close. The restaurant had been running “close to the bone” every week, says Cassandra; the difference of the lost $45,000 would have allowed the restaurant to stay afloat during the “quiet summer months,” she said. Csencsitz works with in tandem with her husband, Bret, a former Gotham general manager, who became a managing partner in 2021.

The theft was result of an email that looked like it came from its payroll company on May 10, she said. The business realized “within hours” that they’d been scammed. The restaurant had been running “close to the bone” every week, and that loss made “all the difference,” Cassandra says. Weeks after the email, the restaurant had still not recouped the money it lost, and the Csencsitzes realized the loss put the restaurant’s finances over the edge.

This past week, co-owner Bret Csencsitz sent employees a frank email, detailing the circumstances of the closing. “I regret to inform you that we are forced to discontinue service, effective immediately,” it reads. “We are terminating our workforce as of today. I am seeking additional capital to reopen for service with a new direction at the end of the summer.”

It continues to say that the restaurant took a hit from a cyber-scam, from which it will need time to recover: “Please know that this was a difficult decision and it was not made lightly. Business levels and a recent cyber-deception incident that resulted in a large loss, made it necessary for us to pause operations to consider our options. Please know that I am deeply appreciative to every employee, and I am sorry for any distress this may cause. I do hope that all will consider rejoining Gotham at the end of the summer,” the email reads.

The Csencsitzes remains hopeful that the restaurant will reopen as planned. “Our pause is just until early August,” Cassandra Csencsitz wrote in a DM to Eater, but “we may open with the bar and grill menu as early as July.” The couple hopes that most of the staff will return. The restaurant did not give employees severance pay for the interim closure period.

Chef Ron Paprocki, the restaurant’s former head pastry chef and the leader of Gotham Chocolates, led the most recent reopening in 2021 and remains head chef; Eater has reached out to him about the closing and about his next steps. Before Paprocki ran the kitchen, critic favorite and current Blanca chef, Victoria Blamey, revamped expectations of the menu when she took over in 2019, landing a three-star review from the New York Times. Before Blamey, it was chef Alfred Portale’s domain for decades. Portale has gone on to open his own namesake restaurant. He also oversees the newish restaurant in the Mercer Hotel, Sartiano’s, owned by mover and shaker Scott Sartiano, behind the favorite club of Mayor Eric Adams, Zero Bond.

—Additional reporting by Ameena Walker