This is the second NYC outpost for the quick-serve joint serving charbroiled burgers and beef tallow fries. The menu includes hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, shakes and Mexican Coca-Cola. (There is a meatless "impossible charburger" available, too.)
Current posted hours are 5-11 p.m., with a 1 a.m. close on Fridays and Saturdays.
Signage arrived here on Dec. 2, 2024, and there wasn't much activity here earlier in the year.
A fast-casual restaurant, Balkan StrEAT, was in the works for the corner space. However, the owners closed their Sixth Avenue outpost and pivoted to the burger biz. (Burgerhead took over the former Balkan StrEAT space at 353 Sixth Ave.)
This Second Avenue address was also home to a Starbucks until April 2019.
And as some long-time residents will recall ... for 37 years the space was the Orchidia, a Ukrainian-Italian restaurant that closed in 1984 after the landlord raised the rent from $950 to $5,000.
The restaurant's closing was a flashpoint in the early 1980s gentrification of the East Village.
"Gentrify, they say that's a good thing," [Orchidia owner] Maria Pidhorodecky told the Times in a December 1983 article titled New Prosperity Brings Discord to the East Village. "To me, 'gentrify' means losing the neighborhood, the restaurant, and the feeling we have of being like family."
5 comments:
I remember Orchidia. A good neighbor unlike the noisy beer & liquor fueled joints of today.
My only enduring memory of the Starbucks was a noisy Coffee Addict banging on their door at 6:55 a.m. (they opened at 7 a.m.).
Gave them a try. It's Burgers and fries. Nothing exciting, but exactly what it should be.
Orchidia was on the south corner, across the street. It was one of the best places in the hood! They had great food and an excellent jukebox. The woman who owned the joint was wonderful. I was really bummed when she told me she closing because the lease was up and the landlord wanted a big rent increase.
By that, I guess you mean the burgers are beef and turkey.
This part of the East Village does not exactly lack for fast casual burgers (the excellent High Life on 1st Ave immediately comes to mind). That said, I was impressed the one time I had a burger at their West Village location, so maybe they can make a go of things. Certainly took 'em long enough to open.
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