PARIS CAFE, SEAPORT

THE South Street Seaport has lost many of its mainstays during the 21st Century…the restaurants Sloppy Louie’s and Sweet’s; the Fulton Fish Market itself, which moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx in 2005; the shops at Pier 17, which may decried as touristy, but where I liked the food court for a cheap tuna pasta salad lunch; and, it was feared during the Covid Crisis, the Paris Cafe, on the ground floor of this grand old brick building at South Street and Peck Slip.

The handsome structure was built in 1873 and was purchased 10 years later by liquor merchant Henry Mayer and converted to a hotel and a boardinghouse. Some of the frequent guests were inventor Thomas Alva Edison, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, gourmand “Diamond Jim” Brady, gunfighter and famed outlaw Butch Cassidy and Teddy Roosevelt when he was police commissioner.

Meyer opened the originally French-themed Paris Café in 1883 with dishes said to be favored by Napoleon Bonaparte and while the hotel is long gone, the Paris is still going strong. Though the Covid outbreak shuttered the Paris in late 2020, it reopened in November 2021. I have dined here just once a few years ago, but enjoyed the fare. An interior photo can be found here.

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