The Goodbye Girl

It’s hard to say goodbye in New York, though the city seems to specialize in it.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to wave farewell to one of my favorite neighborhood spots: Bar56. Collateral damage includes its sister space, Taste56 – my favorite wine store, full stop. The tastings concept had me at hello – or more accurately, at “hell, yes, I want to taste before I buy a bottle.” Taste56 wasn’t just a shop; it was the rare place that let you try wines properly before committing, often in a more formal seated tasting setup that made you feel briefly like you had your life together. Heaven, essentially. Also stunning inside.

Bar56, meanwhile, quietly produced some of the most marvelous food in the neighborhood. Case in point: their tuna tartare, which arrived studded with macadamia nuts and kumquats – already a sentence that feels luxurious – and, if you were lucky (and thankfully I was), a little crown of caviar. It was the sort of dish that made you pause mid-bite and think, oh right, this is why we live here.

Another goodbye: Pitt’s in Red Hook, which I had come to love perhaps even more for its bar than its kitchen – specifically for bartender Ben Hopkins and his Negroni Sazeracs. Yes, you read that correctly. They were exactly as dangerous and perfect as they sound. I had boldly declared them my favorite cocktail in the city, which now means I’m back on the hunt for the drink worthy of that title. Research will be conducted. Heroically.

In the meantime, I’ve updated my NYC Eats & Drinks favorites page – adding a few new spots and removing the dearly departed. It’s a strange little housekeeping ritual that comes with loving the dining and drinking scene in this city: the periodic changing of the guard.

Of course, New York is always in transition. To expect anything else is to not know New York at all. Restaurants open, restaurants close, chefs migrate, landlords raise rents, concepts pivot, menus reinvent themselves. It’s a living organism, occasionally a slightly chaotic one.

Still, there’s an intrinsic sadness when a place you truly loved – run by people you genuinely liked – can’t quite make it work. Hospitality is brutal here. New York is a tough town, and sometimes survival has less to do with strength and more to do with who wins the TikTok lottery that week.

But I’ll be honest: I’m not here for the TikTok game. I’m barely here for the Instagram influencer game anymore - and I say that as someone who has spent plenty of time photographing plates in flattering light.

At the end of the day, I’m here for a great meal and a great time. A good bartender. A perfect dish. A room that feels alive.

If that isn’t what New York is about, I honestly don’t know what is.