The Upper West Side block that lost one of the city’s oldest pizza institutions in January is finally getting a new tenant, and the operators behind it already have a following a couple of blocks away.
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Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith, the couple behind the Mermaid Inn, have leased 61 West 74th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, Commercial Observer reported. They took 2,300 square feet plus a basement at $130 per square foot. It’s the old Patsy’s Pizzeria, which closed in January after nearly 30 years on the block.One of the brokers involved put it more colorfully, calling Abrams “the LeBron of the immediate neighborhood.”
Here’s the fun part: nobody knows what it’s going to be. The restaurant doesn’t have a name yet and the concept hasn’t been decided.
Some context for the guessing game. The Mermaid Inn reopened in October 2024 at 335 Columbus Avenue at 76th Street, a sprawling 6,500-square-foot room that seats roughly 165 to 175 people. The new spot is barely a third that size, so whatever shows up on 74th Street is going to be a much smaller operation. The couple also runs a Mermaid Inn in Chelsea and Mermaid Oyster Bars in Greenwich Village and Times Square.
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As for the space they’re inheriting, it comes with some history. Patsy’s Pizzeria opened in East Harlem in 1933, helped define the classic New York slice, and claims to have come up with the idea of selling pizza by the slice in the first place. The Upper West Side outpost arrived around 1997.We’ll provide updates when we know more!
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