I’m simply dancing round this since 1) I would not have it confirmed from Chris Panayiotou and a couple of) I don’t need it to be true. However there are actually ‘for lease’ indicators at Gee Whiz, and the restaurant has not reopened since neighbors first seen the shades pulled two weeks in the past.
A neighbor who has lived within the Gee Whiz constructing (295 Greenwich) for many years stated the workers there had been advised they’ll take away and discard objects from the restaurant. The locks had been modified, and inside there aren’t any indicators of life. “It’s as if they only closed it up, eliminated the meals, walked out, and left.” One different story was {that a} lease hike had made persevering with untenable.
I don’t assume I’ve to inform anybody right here why that is such a loss for the neighborhood. There are such a lot of causes that Gee Whiz had such endurance over three a long time. Peter Panayiotou and Andy Koutsoudakis opened the diner on the northeast nook of Warren and Greenwich in 1989, and since then performed an element in almost each neighborhood milestone — the anniversaries of PS 234, little league opening days, youngsters tastings at Style of Tribeca. It was the location of many native households’ milestones as effectively (graduations, birthdays, homecomings), to not point out their common weekly suppers.
Peter and Andy had been the primary sponsors of each Downtown Little League and Downtown Soccer League when every began in 1993, and sponsored a staff yearly afterwards, because the partitions of the diner proved. For a pair a long time the restaurant stretched midway to Chambers, however in 2016, confronted with a rise in each lease and wages, they lowered its footprint by half (Joe & the Juice now has the opposite half). The 2 companions opened Tribeca’s Kitchen collectively in 2014; quickly after they break up the enterprise into two and every took one restaurant.
However then the unspeakable occurred when Andy died of Covid-19 on March 29, 2020, and Peter died nine days later, on April 10, 2020. It spoke to the way in which these males ran their companies — greeting every buyer, usually by identify, and at all times with open arms.
The sons of every of the boys saved the companies going, Andreas with Tribeca’s Kitchen and then Marathi, and Chris with Gee Whiz. However it couldn’t have been simple. Marathi closed in 2023, however not earlier than Andreas tried two different iterations to maintain his father’s enterprise alive. And now right here we’re.
It’s actually the tip of an period.
