Photos by Stacie Joy
Sammy's Roumanian Steak House returned to the Lower East Side to much fanfare in April.
However, since opening at its new home, 112 Stanton St., between Essex and Ludlow, we haven't heard too much (where are the reader reports?) about the NYC institution that spent 47 years through the start of the pandemic serving up ice-encased vodka, smeared pitchers of schmaltz and enormous platters of meat from the lower level at 151 Chrystie St.
Sammy's announced its closure in January 2021, vowing to return to the neighborhood.
In June, Matthew Schneier, chief restaurant critic at New York Magazine, wrote that "things are as they ever were."
These photos are from before Sammy's opened for service for the evening—even before the bottles of schmaltz were placed on all the tables and Dani Luv fired up the keyboards.
It's hard to replicate a classic, as Schneier noted.
All is not identical. 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.
Still: "Forty-nine years after its founding, Sammy's is a tradition unto itself."
Sammy's expanded the hours of service earlier in the summer.
The listed hours are Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday: 4-11 p.m., with an 11:30 p.m. close on Fridays and Saturdays.
Sammy's does reservations (recommended) the old-fashioned way: 1-646-410-2427 or sammys157@yahoo.com
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