[Photo by Harry Weiner]
The quick-serve burger place at 92 Third Ave. between 12th Street and 13th Street has not been open the past week. (An especially bad sign that they were closed on Super Bowl Sunday.)
There hasn't been any activity here, including someone answering the phone. And the various food delivery services note that Blue 9 is not currently taking any orders.
I don't recall when this place opened. I found a review at Serious Eats from May 2005, which is about the last time that I ate here.
That's fine. They were so good when they opened, but quality soon plummeted to inedible.
ReplyDelete8:49, exactly right! At the very beginning it was so tasty. I live around the corner and ate there a bunch. Suddenly it got so grimy and filthy, it wasn't being maintained at all, and after one or two bad experiences with the food, I was outta there.
ReplyDeleteSomeone who lived on the block told me a few years ago that people slept inside Blue 9 Burger at night. After she told me that, I did walk by very early in the morning a few times, around dawn, and saw people rolling up the gate and coming out, and what looked like some sleeping bags on the floor. Very bizarre -- was the owner charging people to sleep there, or were they the employees? Unsavory business practices, in any case.
ReplyDeleteI ate there a few time when they opened and I liked the burger and fries, something I usually don't eat. However one day it all seemed wrong, food was off and the place looked like it had not been cleaned or maintained at al since it opened, dirty scuffed walls and floors. It came off my list of quick bite to eat places.
ReplyDeleteI used to consider this the best burger around, but I haven't been by in quite some time. Sorry to hear the quality went downhill.
ReplyDeleteKati Roll!
ReplyDeleteBlue 9 began around 2003 as a project by students at a business school somewhere in the mid-west, I believe (its name came from the team name for the project, incidentally).
ReplyDeleteOnce sold, the quality plummeted --- which is a shame, because when Blue 9 first opened, the burger ranked among the better ones in the city: made to order, good ingredients, attention to detail. Fries were great, too.
And of course, the physical plant deteriorated. It just looked dirty and gross all the time.
I wonder what those business school wizards are up to now, and what they think of what became their little school project.
These guys could have owned the east village fast burger market.
ReplyDeleteInstead, they just let it become a crap hole.
Looks like the health dept closed the uptown one.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170106/upper-east-side/blue-9-burger-shut-down-closed-health-department-contamination-violations
I worked there in the first 2 years of its existence (2003-4). Back then the owner had his sisters friends managing and they had no control over the place. It was literally me and the Mexicans keeping people from dying by properly making the food. I was an nyu student and I loved when the strokes would come in or I would bring them their deliveries where they were recording their record around the corner. The owner sold the place a few years later and I am SHOCKED it lasted as long as it did. I passed by the other day and saw it looked shuttered.
ReplyDeleteThe place did become increasingly dirty over the years. The only real mystery about the closing is how they managed to stay open so long with so few customers. Sadly, they made an excellent milk shake, which I will miss.
ReplyDelete