When a restaurant closes for whatever reason — say a pandemic — and promises to reopen, smart money says no dice. If the place has been around forever — say nearly half a century — smarter money knows to double down.
But all bets are off when it comes to the venerated if not venerable Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, which held court out of the same semi-subterranean quarters on Chrystie Street for 47 years. When the restaurant’s owner, David Zimmerman, announced on Instagram in early 2021 that the restaurant was indeed closing, he also used the opportunity to vow that it would rise from the dead — which it did this past April if a few blocks away from the original.
The new place reportedly has much of the spirit of the old, according to New York Magazine critic Matthew Schneier, who writes:
Sammy’s now finds itself at street level, though it approximates the cave quality of the original by covering its front windows. The room is long, narrow, and black, like a high-school black-box theater, albeit with some of the worst acoustics I have ever experienced in a restaurant. It was so hard to hear that everyone at my table spent the entire meal screaming in vain at one another, in the great Jewish tradition.
But then he adds, “Forty-nine years after its founding, Sammy’s is a tradition unto itself.”
Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, 112 Stanton Street (bet. Essex and Ludlow Sts.), 1-646-410-2427.
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