Quick Bites: Dim Sum Palace closes in the East Village after 8 years | Hunter’s Steak & Ale House ends a 30-year Bay Ridge run | The Brookdale shuts after 6 years | Zaro’s Cafe says goodbye after 32 years | New: Bar Chimera brings a three-room drinks concept to the city.
April closes out with a mix of bittersweet goodbyes and one genuinely exciting new arrival. As the month ends, several neighborhood stalwarts have officially locked their doors — and a few intriguing spring openings are now fully up and running.
What Closed This Week
Dim Sum Palace — East Village
One of the East Village’s more reliable spots for late-night dim sum has closed after nearly eight years. Dim Sum Palace shuttered on Sunday, April 12. It was one of the few places in that neighborhood where you could get har gow and siu mai past midnight. Address: 59 St. Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003.
Hunter’s Steak & Ale House — Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Thirty years is a long run for any restaurant, let alone one in a neighborhood as loyal as Bay Ridge. Hunter’s Steak & Ale House has called it quits, leaving a notable gap in the local dining scene. For three decades it was the kind of place where you took your parents for a birthday dinner and everyone knew the menu by heart. The closure was announced this month with no word on what takes over the space.
The Brookdale — Closed After 6 Years
The Brookdale went viral a few years back for its outsized food challenges — the “Big Cheese” in particular had a moment on social media. After six years in business, the spot has now announced its permanent closure. It’s a reminder that internet fame doesn’t always translate to long-term survival in New York’s brutal restaurant market.
Zaro’s Cafe — 32 Years, Gone
Zaro’s Cafe, the family-run institution that outlasted recessions, pandemics, and endless NYC rent hikes, has finally closed after 32 years. The family cited ongoing financial and operational challenges as the reason. For a lot of New Yorkers, Zaro’s was simply part of the landscape — a place you passed through without thinking much about it, until suddenly it wasn’t there anymore.
Still Running Strong: What Opened Earlier This Month
Bar Chimera — Now Open
Bar Chimera opened April 18 and it’s one of the more ambitious bar concepts to land in the city this spring. The space is split into three distinct rooms: one dedicated to wine, one to martinis, and one to whiskey — each run by its own specialist. It’s the kind of place that rewards multiple visits. Worth checking their hours and booking ahead since the space is designed to fill up fast.
After Eden — Lower East Side (Open Since April 10)
Now fully settled in after its mid-April opening, After Eden at 162 Orchard Street is doing something genuinely interesting: Vietnamese coffee by day, Southeast Asian-inspired cocktails by night. The jackfruit banana latte and cà phê muối have been getting strong early buzz, and the cocktail program — featuring a “Pho-tini” and an Edenrita — sounds like exactly what the LES needed. Open Tuesday–Saturday until 2am. Address: 162 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002.
End-of-Month Snapshot
April 2026 has been a tough month for long-running institutions. Between Hunter’s (30 years), Zaro’s (32 years), and Yamato in Park Slope (30 years, which closed at the end of March), there’s a clear pattern: the places that survived multiple decades are now hitting walls they can’t climb over. Rent increases and the post-pandemic dining shift continue to reshape which neighborhoods and which price points can sustain a business.
The bright side: spring openings like Bar Chimera, After Eden, and Bar Ferdinando in Carroll Gardens (which opened earlier this month at the 121-year-old site of Ferdinando’s Focacceria at 151 Union St, Brooklyn) suggest that NYC’s dining scene is still generating genuinely inventive new concepts. The city keeps turning over.
Know of an opening or closing we missed? The HelpNewYork food desk covers NYC’s restaurant scene borough by borough. Check back for our weekly beat coverage — including cheap eats, ethnic food deep dives, and late-night guides.
