Sipsteria, an espresso bar during the day and wine bar at night, is planning to open at 774 Amsterdam Avenue (southwest corner of West 98th Street). This is the second location for Sipstera, which first opened at 1264 Amsterdam Avenue (between West 122nd and 123rd streets) in January 2024. Giorgi Papiashvilli and Sophio Marcellus, the owners, incorporate their Georgian background into the food and drink menus. The new location has a full kitchen and will be serving tapas, charcuterie, and other dishes to be finalized closer to the opening. “Georgian food is unique because we have our own herbs and spices,” Papiashvilli said on a call with the Rag. The menu will also have a selection of organic, natural wines from Georgia and other Eastern European countries. The space will have seating for around 50 people. It used to be Duke’s Deli II, which closed in February, and before that Moonrise Izakaya, a Japanese bar. The opening is planned for May, but the timeframe might change depending on how the construction progresses. (Thanks to Dana for the tip.)
Abigail’s, the Southern California-inspired restaurant at 2672 Broadway (between West 101st and 102nd streets) closed this past Sunday. The restaurant opened a year ago, but Ash Fulk, director of culinary operations at Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group, said on a call with the Rag that it had not caught on enough to sustain the business. “If a restaurant is not working after 12 months, that’s generally a point that you ask yourself, ‘do you continue?’” he said. The adjoining Street Taco To Go takeaway-only restaurant, which is under the same ownership, has also closed at this location.
Fulk came up with the concept for Abigail’s based on his own California roots. He said he hopes to bring it back in the future, depending on economic conditions. “We’re very proud of the food we serve. We’re very proud of the service and the vibe and the place. So we are hoping it will live again elsewhere in New York City,” he said. Perhaps best known for his appearance on the TV show Top Chef, Fulk lives in the neighborhood and would love to see more local restaurants. “I’m not excited about Chick-fil-A opening on the Upper West Side,” he said. “If we’re not careful and we don’t support our community restaurants more, we’re going to see a lot more of those chains opening.” (Thanks to Laura for the tip.)
Teso Mini, a Japanese convenience store, is coming to 2760 Broadway (between West 106th and 107th streets) in April, a representative told West Side Rag. They sell snacks, bento boxes, kitchen products and utensils, household items, and frozen foods. Teso Mini has more than 10 locations in NYC in all five boroughs. There is one in Chinatown on Mott Street and two in Koreatown. This will be the first location uptown in Manhattan. The space has been vacant for the past few years but used to be a GameStop. (Thanks to Julie, Tracy, and Steven for the tips.)
Green Power Wellness, the massage parlor at 210 West 80th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam), is closed for renovation. There is a sign posted on the door dated February 21st telling customers they are temporarily closed for renovation and that they are welcome to “visit us again.” (Thanks to David for the tip.)
Reverie Room, an alcohol-free performance space in a deli, has opened at 163 West 72nd Street (on the second floor of The Hungry and Healthy Marketplace). The upstairs space, which holds 50 seats, was previously used as a performance venue called the Up & Up (see the Rag’s coverage from December 2023 – HERE). There is a $10 minimum purchase required at the bodega downstairs before entering the venue. Upcoming shows include folk music, jazz, stand-up comedy, and more.
Mama’s Too, the popular pizza place, has opened a space with seating in the storefront next to its existing location on Broadway between West 105th and 106th streets. The space, which used to be a nail salon, now features tables, countertops, and an additional oven. “For so long we haven’t been able to bring our awesome guests into the store with us so this is a humbling experience that is such a pleasure to do for our wonderful home here at our original location,” the company posted on Instagram. “Thank you to everyone on the Upper West Side who braved the cold, rain, snow, the heat, and the rushed service.”
SUGARED + BRONZED, an airbrush tanning and hair removal salon, opened on Monday, March 17, at 495 Columbus Avenue (West 84th Street). SUGARED + BRONZED was founded in Santa Monica, California in 2010 and now has locations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. They have nine locations in NYC (Upper East Side, Murray Hill, Chelsea, Union Square, Midtown East, Boerum Hill, and WIlliamsburg). The salon specializes in sugaring hair removal and custom airbrush tanning. “Our sugaring method uses a natural paste made of sugar, lemon, and water which gently removes hair without the harshness of traditional waxing,” a representative wrote to West Side Rag. “Our custom airbrush spray tans give you a sun-kissed glow without any harmful UV exposure.” They offer a la carte services and memberships where customers receive up to 42% discounts. The last tenant in the space was a Jeffrey Stein Salon, a hair salon that closed in March 2018, merging with its location at 2345 Broadway (at West 86th Street).
Avenue Bakery appears to no longer be opening an Upper West Side location. The bakery had signage up at the northwest corner of Broadway and West 84th Street since January 2024. At the time, a representative had told the Rag that the bakery was planning to open in February 2024. The signage has recently been removed and replaced with a “For Lease” sign. The bakery had an Upper East Side location, which is now listed as closed on Google. The business did not respond to the Rag’s outreach. (Thanks to Andrew for the tip.)
The Openings & Closings column wouldn’t be possible without our many tipsters: thank you! Anyone can send tips about openings and closings in the neighborhood to info@westsiderag.com.
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Living just south of Abigail’s i hadn’t heard of the place until i walked by it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe some press would have helped? Looked nice, we need places like that.
The opening of Abigail’s was published not only in West Side Rag but in the NYT as well.
We have lost yet another independent store in the neighborhood.
Abigails was ok, but nothing out of the ordinary to distinguish it from other reasonably priced restaurants in the neighborhood.
I don’t know how many Asian markets we need from W. 106 to W.111 Streets. I do shop for some items occasionally but this seems like over-saturation. Maybe Mama’s Two could open an authentic Italian market like those in Brooklyn where when you walk in you know you’re back in Nonna’s kitchen!
One in West Harlem would also be amazing
Count your blessings. I would kill for an Asian market up in Inwood!
I would love an Asian market in the 80s.
The Asian markets are a spill-over from Columbia’s population. There’s a larger Japanese market opening up in the old Garden of Eden space as well; the H-Mart on 110th probably isn’t enough for the demand.
There’s an authentic Italian market up on 112th, Milano Market. Yeah, it’s a little further up, but not much further.
H-Mart is great (Korean), Hashi (ex-Garden of Eden) and the new Teso Mini (ex-GameStop) are Japanese, so not the same just because they are Asian, plus Hashi is a supermarket and Teso as stated above is a convenience store. Shoutout to the fantastic Milano Market, love them, well worth the trip. Really sad about the Silver Moon closing 🙁
The more the merrier 🙂
ugh, that’s a bummer about abigail’s. i’ve lived on the corner of 102nd and broadway for 8 years and i think in that time 3-4 different restaurants have inhabited that space.
I’m still mourning the departure of Aangan — their Indian food was
extraordinary.
What happened there? It’s still an Indian restaurant–different people? At first it seemed they posted they were renovating and reopening, so I thought it was the same ownership, even with different name.
So sad about Abigail’s, which was a great place for grabbing an early dinner with kids! Plenty of stroller parking by the host stand, a great kids menu, well-spaced tables, and delicious food (with good happy hour drinks too). The staff there were super nice too.
Surprised about Abigail’s as I saw what to me looked like excellent customer flow both inside and on its way inside the restaurant. History shows that’s a tough, tough location for eateries, yet that’s all that ever opens there. (I go back to the Mama Mexico days there and was once seated next to the tall Backstreet Boy, who was in town for theater at the time)
Any expansion of Mamma’s Too is a good thing
We loved Mama Mexico. Was it great food? Nah. But good enough and the mariachi bands were so fun.
I miss Mama Mexico as well. Saw Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick with their kids there (about 20 years ago). It was a fun/lively place and the first place I had experience table-side guac. preparation.
Mama Mexico, in its prime, was a ton a fun.
in its prime , , , fact!
on a good night, as the mariachi’s were reaching their crescendos, the owner would walk around with a bottle of tequila and offer to pour a shot right into the mouth of anyone who wanted one…..YOWZA!!
Abigail’s never really made it clear what they were about.
It was about food cooked with care & love…whatever that means.
exactly. it was a real scattershot menu and vibe. i live very close by, went twice, and truly never understood what it was trying to be about.
Yes, first it was Street Taco. Then it was Abigail’s and Street Taco. Never made sense. We tried going there once and it was too noisy so we left.
I never understood the decision to change Street Taco, a popular restaurant that I often frequented, to Abigail’s, a place with an identity as inscrutable as its name. I appreciate the ambition to offer something other than fast-casual food, but they failed to communicate what the something was.
Street Taco was expensive and other than at an airport or bowling alley, who thought Margaritas on tap is a good idea? Better tacos just around the corner.
Such a shame about Abigail’s. It was friendly and reliable. Looking forward to Sipsteria. Georgian food is absolutely delicious!
We’re so disappointed that Abigail’s has closed. It was a really nice neighborhood restaurant. The food was consistently good and reasonably priced, the staff was nice as was the whole dining environment. Ugh. Sad that we feel we need to leave the neighborhood in order to dine well.
Ugh. Please help us in the West 100’s.
Please help us in the West 90’s as well!
Looking forward to the new location of Sipsteria. I love their wine bar after 5 PM concept and their sunday jazz. They became a favorite of mine as soon as they opened on Morningside Heights.
That Abigail’s location is a non starter. The layout is difficult, and the tinted windows aren’t exactly inviting. I don’t know what would ever work there, especially since Covid. Traffic is much lower. And the neighborhood gets very quiet after sunset.
That’s so true about the layout–it’s two stores joined together? You never know where to enter (and that was also true in the old Mama Mexico days. Very dark looking, seemed like it was not open.
Quiet because we have nothing to do, no place to go!!
When New York raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour stores could no longer afford 24/7. Cheaper to close early.
A waxing place is also opening on 91st and Broadway, next to the salon
As for the bakery, I suppose the original basket went out of business. I had assumed they decided not to open because of the place that opened on 86th and Broadway. There is definitely a market for kosher Shomer Shabbat bakeries, etc. But two places in two blocks might be too much.
And as for “If we’re not careful and we don’t support our community restaurants more, we’re going to see a lot more of those chains opening.” I am going to guess he has not lived here that long, as I recall when there was a McDonald’s and a Burger King just about one block from each other. There are fewer chain restaurants now than there used to be. The danger is all the small stores closing. That has been going on for a long time, but COVID accelerated it, and because so many habits permanently changed, it is even worse since COVID.
I cant help but think that it must be harder to open a place up since so few restaurants stay open late anymore.
I know Safta’s just opened but I was looking forward to Avenue bc I felt it was a little different from Safta’s. Really a bummer. We actually could use more shomer shabbos bakeries and this would have been down the street from us.
True, but it looks like A venues as a whole just closed down. I don’t know if there would be enough of a market for a kosher place two blocks from another – though there are no real non kosher bakeries, so maybe. Either way I love Saftas
I will miss Abigail’s, it had a really good burger, but the prices were too steep. I know that the owner wanted it to be a place for the neighborhood to come 5 days a week to hang and eat, but a burger and fries at $23 is insane. My significant other and I try to live off a budget of $25 a day for food and it was not feasible for us to eat there often. We will really miss them, there are just too many vacancies on the uws now, and it’s really disheartening to see.
Understood about having a limited budget, but it’s still hard to call $23 for a burger and fries at a sit-down restaurant insane. Is that really so far outside the norm today?
I loved the service at Abigail’s and they had a great happy hour thing- a few great apps and wines. But the actual menu was hard to handle- you had to want to eat a bowl with a ton of stuff, much of it sweetly sauced. There was a good smashburger but even my meat-eater husband could only tolerate so many of them.
I hadn’t heard about Abigail’s either. Since the pandemic I haven’t eaten indoors but it looks like a really good place I’m sorry I didn’t hear about it because I could have ordered in. Good luck to them. It’s a shame that quaint cozy restaurants are closing while the chains are taking over like with everything and every category of marketing.
The opening of the Reverie Room address is actually 163 West 72nd Street (rather than 63). It is such a fabulous place. Great for the community – affordable and fun.
It seems that there are increasing references to addresses above w 96 being UWS. That’s Manhattan Valley not UWS. Maybe young people think of that as UWS, but historically it’s not. I think real estate brokers started this perceived change in boundaries to reap higher rents. But Google UWS map if you’re interested…
Even if you accept the carve out of Manhattan Valley, there’s still a strip west of Broadway (until you hit 110th St., the traditional start of Harlem). It would be frankly bizarre to call Riverside Drive part of Manhattan Valley!
seems like YOU need to google the boundaries of the uws…
Yeah it was traditionally a yuppie free zone which was nice, but gentrification really picked up in the last 20 years and changed the hood quite a bit.
20 years ago? Bag, more like.30 years ago. Above 96th street was getting nice in the 90s. The gentrification East of Broadway above 96th has been fascinating to watch since the early 2000s
Manhattan Valley is very much the UWS 96-110 from E side of Broadway to CPW), as is Bloomingdale 96-110th west of Broadway. Just like Lincoln Center is an area in the UWS.
110th is the end of UWS. On west side it’s Morningside Heights (technically part of Harlem) and West Harlem (Fred Douglas Blvd area).
Actually you can find definitions of UWS online going all the way up to w125 including morningside heights… I guess my bias is just that back in the 70s anything above w96th was not a very desirable area, and you rarely went above w86th. Yeah times change, but initial impressions stick, I guess.
Just because it was once “not a very desirable area” doesn’t make it any less an actual part of the UWS. Once upon a time, West 86th was “undesirable” – think back to the late 60’s/early 70’s – I wonder if you would have considered it not part of the UWS then with this logic!
I’m very sad to see Abigail’s close. Our daughter Abigail was born two weeks before the restaurant opened and it became a special place to us. The staff there were all friendly and were great with us bringing a baby there, and the food was wonderful.
Safta is a coffee shop and mini market with some baked goods.Avenue was supposed to be a full bakery with breads, cookies and cakes. They could have easily coexisted.
Love Sipsteria!
I promote another local restaurant on Amsterdam around 100 street to anyone who will listen – the Grand Feast – doesn’t look fancy from the street and no on line booking platform – but excellent food. Support our local independent places!
Anyone know what’s moving in next to the post office at 700 Columbus Ave (95th Street)?
Very sad that Abigail’s did not make it. It was not a weekly place for me, but a regular. We had a graduation party for my daughter there and everyone really enjoyed the food and service. I hope it finds a new home somewhere that I can visit. It would be great if we could get an Italian restaurant in the area.
wanted to try Abigail’s — walked in, there was a small line, waited a bit looking around to see who might be in charge of seating, then the hostess appeared from behind and actually pushed past me to get to the front — no excuse me, no “will be right with you”, nothing — never returned. First impressions matter.