Prime Burger to Exit as Midtown Integrity Teeters
Prime Burger, the Midtown diner of great longevity and startlingly un-ironic urban authenticity, is going to close. The news comes from Eater, who hears it from a tipster, who said the end may come as soon at Saturday. The reason: the building, owned by the Prime Burger people, has been sold. So I assume this is a decision that they readily invited.
The place, situated opposite St. Patrick's Cathedral, is 74 years old, and has a timeless New York diner atmosphere and wonderful school-desk-like individual tables you won't see anywhere else in town. The burgers are simple and cheap and good. That it is closing is a crippling loss to the City, and to the character of increasingly faceless Midtown, which only a few weeks ago lost the beautiful bar Bill's Gay 90s. The foodies who run the James Beard Awards prized it enough to give the joint a trophy back in 2005. If you want to know more about it, read this.
They haven't announced an exact closing date yet. But it will be soon. So I'd run.
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I've read online pieces about Prime Burger's closing that made it sound as if the restaurant owner was taken by surprise by, and deeply upset over, the new building owner's decision to evict the restaurant.
But then I saw other references, including on your blog, to the fact that the owners of the restaurant were also the previous owners of the building--which makes it seem as if they could have insisted on the right to stay open when they sold the building.
Does anyone know the real story? They've been saying they'd like to reopen at another location, but that doesn't seem likely if they were complicit in this one closing.
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