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Another downtown institution has quietly bit the dust. Cafe Gitane, a longstanding bastion of Nolita cool, appears to have closed without warning on Mott Street, ending a more than 30-year run as one of the neighborhood’s most enduring hangouts.
The closure came to light late last week after reports surfaced that the space had been boarded up. Follow-up reporting from Eater confirmed the shutdown after staff at the cafe’s Vinegar Hill location acknowledged that the original had closed. The restaurant’s website is also offline, though its owner, Luc Lévy, has made no public announcement.
Lévy opened Cafe Gitane in June of 1994, before Nolita was even a recognized neighborhood—and business was so slow that he once sent his only waitress home mid-shift. (That waitress, Charlyn Marshall, later went on to record her first album as Cat Power.)
Quickly, the French-Moroccan cafe became an unofficial living room for artists, models, musicians and restaurant insiders. David Bowie, Spike Jonze, Michelle Williams and Helena Christensen were counted as regulars. Gitane also earned eternal cultural credit for helping put avocado toast on the map long before it became ubiquitous on brunch menus everywhere (and the butt of many jokes).
Even as Nolita slowly transformed into a high-rent retail corridor, Gitane proved unusually resilient. Last year, the New York Times declared the “intimidatingly cool canteen” back on the rise, thanks to the release of Cafe Gitane: 30 Years, a coffee table book written by Isobel Lola Brown, the then-general manager. The book launch drew both longtime devotees and a younger crowd, briefly making it feel like the place had found a second life.
Behind the scenes, though, the cafe had been facing turbulence. Back in the fall, Grub Street published a story in which multiple current and former employees alleged missing paychecks and unpaid wages, alongside a slew of financial and legal disputes tied to the business. Court records show the Mott Street location was sued by its landlord in 2020 for more than $470,000 in unpaid rent and fees, even though that case was later settled.
The shutdown comes as Nolita continues its shift toward high-rent retail and well-capitalized restaurant groups, a landscape far removed from the neighborhood that existed when Cafe Gitane first opened. The restaurant has not issued a public statement and it’s unclear what’s next for the space.