{"id":596305,"date":"2026-08-17T19:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T19:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/596305\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T19:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T19:48:10","slug":"good-enough-to-eat-is-closing-after-45-years-on-the-uws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/596305\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Enough to Eat Is Closing After 45 Years on the UWS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York has lost plenty of neighborhood institutions over the years, but this one may hit particularly hard for anyone with strong feelings about pancakes and strawberry butter.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodenoughtoeat.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Good Enough to Eat<\/a>, a longtime Upper West Side brunch favorite known for its homey American cooking and weekend crowds, is closing after 45 years in business. The restaurant at 520 Columbus Avenue will serve its final brunch on Sunday, August 30.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00a0first opened in 1981, when chef Carrie Levin launched Good Enough to Eat on Amsterdam Avenue. Then, it moved a few blocks north to West 83rd Street before relocating to its current home on Columbus Avenue in 2013. Over the decades, it became an Upper West Side stalwart, attracting neighborhood regulars and tourists alike for plates of comfort food, including bacon-studded waffles, cinnamon-swirl French toast, omelets, buttermilk biscuits and, perhaps most famously, pancakes slathered with a signature strawberry butter.<\/p>\n<p>RECOMMENDED:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeout.com\/newyork\/news\/one-of-the-longest-standing-gay-restaurants-in-nyc-is-closing-after-25-years-030326\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">One of the longest standing &#8220;gay restaurants&#8221; in NYC closed after 25 years<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The restaurant moved to its current Columbus Avenue location in 2013 after Levin partnered with restaurateur Jeremy Wladis to keep the business going when its Amsterdam Avenue lease wasn\u2019t renewed. (Levin later retired and died in 2023 at age 65.)\u00a0This time around, Wladis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilovetheupperwestside.com\/good-enough-to-eat-is-closing-after-45-years-but-its-not-really-a-goodbye\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">told I Love the Upper West Side<\/a> that both business conditions and the expiration of another lease factored into the decision. He said the restaurant no longer attracts the volume of tourists it once did, while he and the landlord were unable to agree on the value of a new lease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe landlord thinks it\u2019s worth a lot more money than I do and we can\u2019t come to a decision,\u201d Wladis told the outlet. \u201cI just think it\u2019s time to move from that space.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is, however, a bit of good news for anyone already contemplating a strawberry-butter withdrawal: much of the food isn\u2019t disappearing.\u00a0Fred\u2019s, Wladis\u2019s sister restaurant at 476 Amsterdam Avenue, will begin serving Good Enough to Eat\u2019s breakfast menu Monday through Friday from 8 am to 4 pm. Fred\u2019s will also open earlier on weekends, at 9 am instead of 11 am and fold a number of Good Enough to Eat favorites into its existing lunch and brunch menus.<\/p>\n<p>The Good Enough to Eat name itself won\u2019t make the move, though. \u201cIt\u2019s not really a goodbye,\u201d Wladis said.<\/p>\n<p>Still, after more than 40 years of breakfasts, August 30 is the end of an era for the Upper West Side. If you want one last meal inside Good Enough to Eat itself, you have less than two weeks to get those pancakes (and plenty of strawberry butter) while you still can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York has lost plenty of neighborhood institutions over the years, but this one may hit particularly hard&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[63400,61,60,63401,6339,80],"class_list":["post-596305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-categories-restaurants","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news-eating","tag-restaurants","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}