After 17 years, The Mermaid Inn's main location in the East Village will close, although their other locations in New York City will remain open... for now.
The Mermaid Inn was a seafood restaurant known for it's amazing oyster happy hour deals. The owners Daniel Abrams and Cindy Smith shared the upsetting news with Eater this week, writing a three page letter detailing why they are closing. The closing mostly involves the unattainable lease agreement with their landlord for rent. They also go into detail of how closing affects more jobs than just their servers and cooks.
“We are providing these numbers to show the effect the closing of a SINGLE restaurant has. Now multiply that by THOUSANDS of NYC restaurants closing,” they wrote. “The loss of opportunity for employees, the loss of income for city, state and local governments, the loss of sales to our fish companies, our vegetable company, the linen company, even the company that comes to take our used oyster shells or our discarded grease. If we don’t pay them, they do not pay their employees and so on and so on. The chain is never ending.”
You can read a copy on their website here.
The Mermaid Inn also have locations in Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and the Upper West Side, but only the Upper West Side location is currently open (for outdoor dining).
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