Your weekly close on what the city's food operators lost, won, and survived this week.

State of the Street · New York

THE COOKIE NEVER CHANGED.
THE ATTENTION DID.

By Marco Shalma

I have spent the spring counting cookie shops. In a few years New York turned the quietest item in the bakery into its own category. Giant cookies, rotating weekly flavors, six and seven dollars for a single one, boxes built to be photographed the second they hit the counter. Crumbl proved the model scales nationally. For a moment the math looked unstoppable.

The cookie did not get better. The attention around it did, and attention moves fast. A shop opens to a line around the block, someone films the break-open shot, two blocks over another shop opens, then another. Then the line gets shorter. The operators who survive will look less like viral drops and more like neighborhood bakeries with regulars who come in twice a week. The ones who treated a trend as a business plan are about to learn it was always just a cookie.

Off The Menu · Morningside Heights

TWO PRESIDENTS, ONE FOLK SONG, THE SAME WESTERN OMELET

By Reagan Payne

Tourists crowd the corner of Broadway and 112th to photograph a red neon Restaurant sign they know from a sitcom that ended in 1998, then leave without ordering a coffee. Inside, Mike Zoulis runs the diner his family has held since 1946, six years after Tom Glikas opened it in 1940. The U-shaped counter still has stools. The booths still have vinyl. The Western omelet runs all day, and the milkshake still comes with the extra in the metal cup.

The clientele tells the rest. Obama ate here as a Columbia student. So did John McCain when he visited his daughter. Suzanne Vega wrote a song about the place in 1987, and NASA scientists model the climate in the same building upstairs. Diners are down 60 percent in 25 years, roughly 13 closing a year, with about 300 left across the five boroughs. Tom's is still here because the rent never chased the block and the eggs never chased a trend.

For The Culture · New York

THE ANTHORA IS BEHIND GLASS. THE DINERS ARE GONE.

By NYEH

Greek immigrants built the New York morning, two shifts a day, a paper cup stenciled with three steaming coffees and We Are Happy To Serve You. The Anthora moved 500 million units a year by 1994 and 200 million by 2005. Solo discontinued the original in 2006, Starbucks took the morning takeout, and the Pavilion, La Bonbonniere, Cheyenne, River, and the Vegas all closed. MoMA put the cup behind glass and called it a token. The operators who carried it never got a vitrine.

Hold 'Em Accountable · Washington

WASHINGTON REDREW THE SNAP MAP. THE BODEGA IS THE TARGET.

By Marco Shalma

New York pulls close to $8 billion in SNAP a year, about 1.8 million recipients in the five boroughs, and much of that money moves through bodegas and independent grocers instead of Whole Foods. Three moves changed the rules: a $186 billion cut signed July 4, 2025, work requirements that took effect here March 1, and a USDA stocking rule finalized May 7 that forces small stores to carry seven varieties across four categories by November 4. Big-box stores already clear the bar. The corner store is the one that gets pushed out of the program.

Astor Place, 739 Broadway. George Stratidis opened Cozy Soup 'n' Burger in 1972, and his family held a $9.50 burger on the menu for 54 years while the zip code crept past $20. A March GoFundMe bought a few more months, and the rent came back harder. June 21 is the last order.

City Hall, on the record. DOT blames the Council's 2023 law for the outdoor-dining permit backlog, Speaker Julie Menin's office blames how DOT wrote the rules, and the environmental review does not finish until September. The pandemic program seated 6,000 to 8,000 restaurants. A few hundred are approved now, with nearly 1,000 stuck in the backlog through the summer they needed the seats.

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