KIPS BAY — Benjamin Restaurant & Bar shuttered abruptly this week after decades in the neighborhood — blaming the closure on the city's "incredible greed" and "unmanageable" labor laws in a letter posted in its window.
The Second Avenue bar, open since 1974, closed virtually without warning sometime between Monday and Tuesday, according to neighbors stunned by the sudden change.
Joyce Batson, a longtime customer who lives across the street from Benjamin, said she was there Saturday and got no sense that there was anything wrong.
She showed up to the eatery, near East 33rd Street, for Tuesday night trivia this week — an event she and her friends have been attending religiously for years — only to see the doors locked and a sign in the window.
“I’m so sad and I know so many people in this neighborhood are sad to see it go,” Batson said. "Everybody is just in a state of shock. It was a staple in the neighborhood.
“I have to believe that if they knew anything somebody would have said something."
The note left on the door gives few details about the reason for the closure, but says, “Due to the incredible strains put onto small neighborhood restaurants, the current economic environment, the totally unmanageable labor laws to small businesses, the incredible greed of the city’s health dept., this incredibly popular neighborhood favorite has no choice to close. This is a very sad day for all of us.”
Holly Cefrey, who plays trivia with Batson and was hanging out with her at Benjamin on Saturday, echoed her friend's surprise.
“There was no warning,” she said. “We have no idea where we’re going to go now.”
The note referenced the Feldman family, which owns the restaurant, and Bridget Knapp, the general manager, and was signed “the Benjamin Family.”
Knapp did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday and calls to the catering arm of the family’s company, Benjamin Catering, went unanswered.
It was not immediately clear what gripe the owners had with the Department of Health. In its most recent inspection in January the agency gave the bar an A grade.
A representative of the Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Benjamin first opened as “Mumbles” in 1974 and changed its name sometime after that. It had a fiercely loyal clientele and had family-style meals on all the major holidays for people who couldn’t be with their families, according to Cefrey.
It’s the second bar owned by the family to close in less than a year. Mumbles, which was located at East 17th Street and Third Ave in Gramercy (not to be confused with the original iteration of Benjamin) closed in January, with owner David Feldman citing slow business, a younger population in the neighborhood with different tastes and the desire to shed a bit of his workload, according to Town & Village.
The family still owns one restaurant East of Eighth, at West 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, which remains open, but an employee there hung up the phone when a reporter called for comment.
