How 24 places died, and New York became the City That Sleeps

On a recent Sunday evening, Imad Khachan encountered a problem once unthinkable in New York City.

“I had a friend and his wife visiting from overseas,” says Khachan, the owner of Chess Forum, Greenwich Village’s last remaining chess shop. “They stopped by and said, ‘We’d like to go have dinner around nine o’clock.’ . . . I understand it was Sunday, but we really were hard-pressed to find a place that opened till 10 o’clock, let alone 24 hours. I couldn’t tell them where we [should] go. I felt so embarrassed.”

Khachan’s experience reflects a strange new reality facing New York’s night owls. Across the five boroughs, restaurants and businesses that once opened into the wee hours of the morning shut their doors between 8 and 11 p.m.

Late-night coffee shops are all but extinct, and all-night diners are similarly endangered. Khachan’s own Chess Forum, open 24/7 for decades, now closes at midnight.

When did New York become the city that sleeps?

The shift began at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the city forced restaurants and bars to close. Nearly 1,000 never reopened, and five years after the pandemic’s inception, many that did survive have not returned to their old hours. Their owners cite various factors.

From its founding in 1964 until 2020, Sarge’s Delicatessen was open 24/7. Even a 2012 fire that forced the business to close until 2014 couldn’t deter owner Andrew Wengrover from serving overstuffed pastrami sandwiches through the night. But in 2021, he began closing at 10 p.m.

New York’s pandemic-era decline discouraged him from returning to the old model.

“Employees really started to not feel safe getting on the subways late at night, walking around the city,” Wengrover said. “The city definitely isn’t what it used to be.”

Even if crime were eradicated in New York, Wengrover would only slightly extend his hours.

“I don’t miss getting phone calls at three o’clock in the morning that people are pulling the fire alarms and all this stuff,” Wengrover said. “I also don’t live as close [to the store] as I used to. I’d like to be open later than 10 o’clock. But I’m okay not being 24 hours.”

Sarge’s is a Murray Hill institution, but Wengrover thinks a 24/7 establishment is out of step with the neighborhood’s future.

“Everything’s closing. They’re building all these high-rises,” he says. “If it was maybe more of a commercial situation, it would have been an easier decision.”

It’s a similar story on the Upper West Side, where nightclubs and bars have been largely supplanted by luxury residences. This cultural shift led French Roast, a longstanding neighborhood bistro formerly open 24 hours, to close its doors at 10 or 11 p.m. each night.

“There simply isn’t the demand for us to be open,” said general manager Sam Belanger. “We would be operating at a loss for the late-night hours.”

Belanger has no plans to expand the hours “unless late night venues and attractions return to the Upper West Side.” He also considers the protean nature of New York’s restaurant scene a continual challenge.

“New Yorkers love their memories of the past and are always sad when landmark restaurants change or close,” Belanger said. “But they need to ask themselves, ‘When was the last time I was there?’ [A] visit for nostalgia every five years or so cannot support a restaurant, so the restaurant needs to reinvent itself.”

French Roast isn’t the only bistro to stir up wistful feelings among New Yorkers. L’Express opened in Gramercy Park in 1996 and operated 24 hours a day until the pandemic. Since reopening in 2021, its hours have steadily extended; it now closes at 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, 2 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and midnight from Sunday to Tuesday.

But according to Torris Pelichet, a brand and business strategist for the restaurant, it’s unclear whether it will resume full 24-hour service, despite customers’ frequent inquiries.

“I think New Yorkers were a little bit more hardcore before the pandemic,” Pelichet said. “You would see a lot of the business folks, the white-collar guys at a bar until 2 or 3 a.m. on a Wednesday. And then they’ll wake up early in the morning to go to work. And I think the pandemic just changed a lot of that stuff. And maybe people don’t value that kind of lifestyle anymore.”

For other restaurants, the obstacle to nonstop service isn’t a lack of customers but a lack of employees. At Veselka, a Ukrainian staple in the East Village, owner Jason Birchard is eager to open around the clock, as he did before the pandemic. But finding workers who share his enthusiasm has proven difficult.

“There’s just a lot [fewer] people in the workforce that are looking for hospitality jobs,” Birchard said. “It’s a struggle at times to just find the staff for the regular hours, to be honest.”

Birchard offers a few reasons for the staffing shortage. Among them are immigration restrictions and the advent of Zoom, which has allowed struggling actors, many of whom would have once waited tables, to audition for roles remotely without moving to the city. But for the most part, he’s bewildered by the lack of available help.

Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that things will recover. “Right before Covid, I remember being here at 3 a.m. working on one of those shifts. And it was just as busy, if not busier, at 3 a.m. than it would be at three in the afternoon on a busy weekday or weekend. Obviously, there’s a lot of allure, a lot of promise to be open late at night. People enjoy a quality meal.”

From City Journal.