Café Loup, the French bistro that has been a West Village mainstay for decades, has been shuttered after being seized by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance over unpaid taxes.
These are the tax liens currently on file for Café Loup with NYS: pic.twitter.com/P66CACrp1T
— gettingsome (@gettingsome) September 19, 2018
Initially opening on 13th Street near University Place in 1977, Café Loup moved to its permanent home at 105 W. 13th Street, near Sixth Avenue, in the early '80s. As Eater notes, it became a fixture for the city’s literary and publishing scene, counting Paul Simon, Susan Sontag, and Paul Auster among its regulars. The NY Times called it "the genteel but unpretentious West Village bistro that continues to bridge generations in terms of its appeal to editors, academics and writers." (They also recommended it in 2012, calling it a great bar for "conversation, and not necessarily your own.")
"Café Loup is one of the few bars I’ve ever really loved," said Caroline Eisenmann, a literary agent for Frances Goldin Literary Agency. She tweeted out the photos up above, noting "the man standing outside commented 'the world has ended.'"
"It was an important professional space, a living room among friends, a place to take meetings and to celebrate and to recharge," she added. "I have too many memories there to possibly count. I guess I’ll share this: I watched the 2016 election returns come in there over a swimming pool-sized martini, blurrily wrote 'God help us' under my tip on the receipt, and continued to frequent Loup even after going through that horrifying event. If this is the end, I am devastated."
Christopher Hitchens also wrote about his love for Loup in 2001, calling it "my true bar," which he described so: "[It] should have an element of cafe-society to it; a place for newspapers and espresso as well as cocktails and basic food, and a place where you could bring your mother, if you had a mother, for a light lunch as well as your mistress or male lover, if you had a mistress or male lover, for a late-ish nightcap."
It's unclear whether this is a permanent closure. Many patrons have been tweeting tributes and memories of the cafe today.
I can't imagine New York City without Cafe Loup.
— Sam Sifton (@SamSifton) September 19, 2018
This was the site of my first proper dinner date with a guy. It ended about as well as things have ended for Cafe Loup. I will miss this essential touchstone for half the West Village. The restaurant, I mean. https://t.co/LGPHU1UCzl
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) September 19, 2018
This summer, I lost a dear friend to cancer. I’d never experienced a friend’s death before. I’m still not sure where to put that kind of grief. We used to meet for dinner every 2 or 3 months, always at Cafe Loup. Everything is temporary. If you love someone or something, say so. https://t.co/wZ0GioZNMA
— J. Courtney Sullivan (@jcourtsull) September 19, 2018
Several years ago I was eating lettuce and drinking french 75s at cafe loup, when I saw a rat dash across the dining room. It was the essential editorial assistant experience!
— Laura Marsh (@lmlauramarsh) September 19, 2018
Café Loup -- the warm lighting, faux-Euro decor, random assortment of literary types present at any given moment -- always felt like a spot from the New York I idealized in my younger years, all the more so because it was actually affordable.
— Nick Newman (@Nick_Newman) September 19, 2018
Easter 2016. We visited my ailing grandmother in her hospital bed, and then she sent us with her credit card to Cafe Loup, where we ate rabbit stew, got drunk as lords on the 24 oz martinis, and had a good cry. https://t.co/2DyYKcMocM
— Nicholas Mancusi (@NicholasMancusi) September 18, 2018
Did I see a rat? A roach? A rat and then a roach? Yes, yes. But it was the best place to meet friends on a Friday night when you want to get blackout drunk and not see anyone younger than 55.
— Reyhan Harmanci (@harmancipants) September 19, 2018
The food at Cafe Loup was awful and overpriced and I always loved every minute of being there and NYC is dead to me
— EK (@EllenKilloran) September 19, 2018
I’ve said so many outrageous things at Cafe Loup with maybe every poet I’ve known in New York. People will say the food was bad but I never had it so. If they want to say New York is over I won’t be having that either.
— Alex Dimitrov (@alexdimitrov) September 19, 2018
One thing everyone can agree on: it was a great place to catch up with local celebrities (and/or drink them under the table):
In 1995 I sat for four hours, smoking, with Uma Thurman, at the table under the “seized” sign, for a Harper’s Bazaar profile. RIP Cafe Loup. https://t.co/3U0XHXa258
— Dwight Garner (@DwightGarner) September 19, 2018
This is so sad. I once sat across a table from John Ashbery at Cafe Loup. https://t.co/cVRf87sLVC
— nicole steinberg (@nicolebrett) September 19, 2018
Things I have done at Café Loup: spying on Ethan & Uma at dinner in the early 2000s; having a drink w/ an older, more established writer & realizing he was mining me for ideas; splitting a bottle of wine w/ a long-ago ex & confirming I was over him at last.
— Dana Stevens (@thehighsign) September 19, 2018
the only way to toast cafe loup would be to make an extra large martini with a second helping in the shaker with lynn yaeger and patricia clarkson
— E. Alex Jung (@e_alexjung) September 19, 2018
Omg well after seeing Patricia Clarkson dozens of times, @knottyyarn bought her a drink and she came over to our table and asked us if we’d ever been to Loup before... we were so close to becoming drinking buddies, I SWEAR
— Reyhan Harmanci (@harmancipants) September 19, 2018
Update: A spokesperson for the Tax Department confirmed that the bistro was seized on Tuesday. "There are four open warrants with a current warranted balance of $188,394.40," said spokesperson James Gazzale.
He added that after seizing a business, the department works to try to resolve the debt as quickly as possible: "Seizing a business is always a last resort," he told Gothamist. "Generally speaking, after seizing a business, we continue being in communication with the owner looking for mutually beneficial ways to resolve that debt. Once we find a way forward, and feel confident enough to return the keys to the business, we do so."