“The business has faced a protracted period of financial hardship, and we’ve reached a point where it is no longer viable to continue operating,” the post reads. Eater has reached out to Tarlow to find out if the restaurateur will keep the space and turn it into something new.
Located at 180 West Street, near Green Street, Achilles Heel opened in 2013 as a neighborhood gathering spot with a straightforward menu of sandwiches, salads, and snacks alongside coffee, wine, and beer. Tarlow told Eater he opened it when the landlord approached him about doing something with the space. It had been a tavern from the early 1900s to the 1960s, but sat vacant for 40 years, he said.
The restaurant became known for its community-oriented programming, hosting pop-ups, residencies, and events over the years. Banchan by Sunny ran a residency at Achilles Heel before chef Sunny Lee opened her own restaurant, Sunn’s, on the Lower East Side this past year.
Lee Desrosiers, a former meat cutter at Tarlow’s butcher shop, Marlow & Daughters, helmed the kitchen when it opened and earned the restaurant a one-star review from former New York Times critic Pete Wells. He praised tartines with lardo and Sichuan peppercorn, black trumpet mushrooms, and salt-cured fluke. Desrosiers became known for “Hell Chicken,” a Sunday backyard special where spatchcocked birds were hung and smoked over a custom wood grill before being steamed in cast iron and finished with char.
The closing announcement thanked “all the longshoremen, swashbucklers, hell chickens, first dates, oyster shuckers, fire starters, piano players, disc jockeys, poetry readers, outdoor grillers, indoor smokers, bartenders, card players, fundraisers, wood choppers, dish washers, mood rings, farmers, crime writers, pozole eaters, Greenpointers, out of towners and sunset watchers.”
“It has been an honor to share this space with you all for 13 years,” the post concludes.