Where Will We Go Without Café Loup?

A couple of days ago, word started to spread: someone walking down 13th Street near 6th Avenue had discovered a “seizure” notice on the doors of cafe loup, the beloved coffee bar that has quietly Hosting generations of New Yorkers, the space has been dark ever since. On Wednesday morning, Eater reported that the restaurant has several hundred thousand dollars in unpaid taxes; It is not yet clear if the closure will be permanent. (my phone calls to the restaurant went unanswered). as the news traveled, r.i.p. the messages flooded the social networks: of disbelief, of sadness. Everyone wants to claim a piece of Café Loup history; It was (is?) the kind of place that makes you feel like an owner. “new york is really coming to an end,” a friend texted me.

Over the course of his forty-one years, Loup was a town stalwart, a favorite of the late Christopher Hitchens, food critic Seymour Britchky and others in the shrinking print media scene. Despite its decades of service, it never became an inside joke, like the upper west side barney greengrass institution, or an exclusive club, like rao’s, where the patrons literally own the tables, or a glitzy scene. media, like the late elaine’s. it wasn’t one of those venerable places that made your heart ache because every visit could be your last. You didn’t feel like you needed to keep it “secret” if you were the kind of person who likes to hoard restaurants, and didn’t have the dark and ironic prestige of its neighbor, Spain. It was that much rarer New York luxury: a place that was totally and completely taken for granted.

Reading: Cafe loup nyc

loup was a place with a layout long enough, dim enough, and varied enough that regulars could have strong table preferences; neighbors who dined and drank there literally every night, poets and publishers who held their favorite banquets, elderly people who were treated with kindness and respect. I know a middle-aged man who had been going there since he was twelve years old. people got married there. he was received with familiarity but without pampering; you didn’t feel left out if you had never been before.

“what qualities, once found, make one think of a bar as one’s own?” hitchens wrote in a 2001 tribute. he went on to describe café loup’s versatility:

A few years ago, loup did not qualify as a true vestige of any kind of bohemia. But, due to its location near the new school and the ever-invasive nyu, and its proximity to several publishers (fewer per year), it continued to attract a crowd of book lovers; By unspoken tradition, everyone repaired there after the National Book Critics Circle Award, which gives a good idea of its place on the international scale of glamour. and, because of its location between uptown and downtown, the east and west sides, it was just as convenient to carroll gardens as it was to claremont avenue.

no one went there for the food. It wasn’t dramatically terrible, but, when I first started going there, at least everyone knew the fries were the best thing on the menu. (The burgers and cassoulet had their defenders, too; Hitchens’ regular order of oysters seems, in retrospect, bold.) Serious drinkers were well-represented, to be sure, but a lightweight could down a White House glass without embarrassment. , and the occasional fancy kid kept things gentle. the dropped ceiling and the urinal cake-scented hallway leading to the bathroom were hideous, from an objective point of view, but the lines of sight were somehow perfect; you could hide in there, it was the kind of place that offered the chill of unexpected and awkward encounters, and you could read in peace or socialize as the mood took you.

Any collection of people is wonderful in its own way, but how often do you get a chance to learn how to do it? Many of Loup’s servers, bartenders, and runners stayed for decades. they knew our stories, secrets and eccentricities, and we knew theirs. Over the years, I’ve started more than one lasting friendship there. I learned which regulars didn’t tip and which ones had been discreetly eighty-six. I had fights with friends and run-ins with exes, and some acquaintances discovered that I had a secret love affair. and I didn’t even go there that much.

In the last five years, there have been changes: a couple of owners got divorced; one suffered a tragic accident. after the business changed hands several years ago, some old servers left. sides were taken. in hindsight, perhaps we all should have been less surprised that this could happen. i thought i’d get used to treasured places closing down in new york. but this one hurts. I loved café loup, not more than anyone else, but like a large number of people did. if he’s really gone, where will we meet instead?