Figaro Café: The Once-Famed Beatnik Café Is Returning To Greenwich Village This Summer - Forbes

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In the heart of Greenwich Village in the heyday of the beatnik era in the 1960’s, the coffeehouse,Le Figaro Café, was the place to be. It was frequented by writers Allan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, musician Lou Reed, playwright/actor Sam Shepard, who once worked there as a barista when he first came to New York, and scores of people wearing black berets.

But many things fade and so did Le Figaro Café, which shuttered in 2008. But now partners, restaurateur Mario Skaric and attorney Florence Zabokritsky, backed by some well-heeled investors, are reviving it, under a simpler name, Figaro Café. It expects to open by June or July.

Despite the pandemic’s crushing effect on tourism in New York, Skaric is optimistic that millennials, babyboomers and diverse New Yorkers will flock to a revitalized European café, open for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner.

Skaric, a 31-year-old trained attorney who hails from Croatia but has lived in New York City for eleven years, has worked at several top-flight New York eateries, including Baby Brasa in the West Village and currently as general manager at The Grill at the Standard Highline.

He and his partner first identified the vacant space in June of 2019, before the pandemic struck. When they returned to see if it was still available after the pandemic hit, they were offered a “steep discount” on the first two years of its lease, to make it palatable, he suggested.

Restoring it as Café Figaro “seemed natural to revive its most famous tenant,” Skaric said.

“We wanted to bring it back for people who do know it and introduce it to the people who didn’t,” Skaric exclaimed. He’s prepared for critiques from old-timers who will say, “It’s not like it used to be.”

The fifties and sixties, he noted, are in vogue with TV series such as ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “The Queen’s Gambit,” making it a propitious time to revive it.

It closed in 2008 when it was operated by its landlord, who found it too cumbersome to run the eatery alongside his real-estate holdings.

Skaric is hoping by the time it opens this summer the effects of the pandemic will subside, but its extensive outdoor space, which will seat about 60 people, on Bleecker Street and MacDougal Street, will make it safer to dine. It will also accommodate about 125 indoor seats.

Nonetheless, Skaric candidly acknowledges “I’m definitely concerned for the first year, but by the second year, I believe that New York City will bounce back. It always does, as it did after 9/11l.”

He describes the upcoming menu as “modern American, combining dishes from France and Italy with American soul food, including po’ boys, fish, oysters, caviar and tartare.” It will appeal to pescatarians, carnivores and vegetarians.

Special desserts include cotton candy crème bulee, toasted tableside, and baked Alaska, flambéed tableside.

Coffee will be provided by Porto Rico Importing Company, the original supplier for Le Figaro Café, to tie the present to the past.

He compares its menu to the trendy Café Pastis that has thrived in the Meatpacking district, where it recently reopened after a move.

It will be an upscale café, with prices similar to nearby Caffé Dante, but less than Minetta Tavern and Carbone.

It’s aiming to attract a “neighborhood crowd, mostly locals, and New Yorkers from the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, when they go downtown to the West Village,” Skaric said.

Though it will offer third-party delivery at the beginning to generate revenue, Skaric admits that “he’s not a fan” and taking 35% to 40% of the check is too much. He’d prefer to offer its own delivery service and cut out the middleman.

Skaric feels like a New Yorker and wants to give back. He was once told that if you can cry on the subway and see Woody Allen on the street, you’re a New Yorker, and he’s done both.

His goal is for the Figaro Café “to become a neighborhood staple for New Yorkers to come to in the West Village. We hope that our food and service warrant it.”

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Figaro Café: The Once-Famed Beatnik Café Is Returning To Greenwich Village This Summer - Forbes
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