“You know, I brought avocado toast to New York City.”
This is what Cafe Gitane owner Luc Lévy told me when I was interviewing for a waitress job back in 2021. I was going door to door in SoHo and Nolita, penniless and unemployed, with a stack of service resumes. Cafe Gitane was the fourth restaurant I had hit that day. Luc and I had an on-the-fly interview, and despite me only having minimal experience at the time, our interview ended with him asking when I could start. Thus, my career as a service worker began.
For the six months of my employment, I worked 10-hour days, Thursday through Sunday, at the infamous Mott Street location. This, apparently, was irregular. There was an overt hierarchy at Gitane: The waitresses Luc deemed “pretty,” or particularly charismatic, got to work primetime shifts at Mott Street. The ones he didn’t prefer (or new employees) were relegated to the cozier, quieter (read: less money) Vinegar Hill location.
The allure of these 10-hour days may seem unclear from the outside, but the truth of it was simple. Gitane was busy all the time, our tables peppered with celebs and downtown characters: Tobey Maguire, Jake Hoffman, Zac Bahaj (of Lucien) and Julian Casablancas (of The Strokes), to name a few. When I worked, clad in my lime green apron and orange bandana, ferrying couscous and avocado toast between the tightly packed two-tops, I felt — dare I say — like a glamorous part of the show.
We also made a lot of money — especially considering most of the staff was aged somewhere between 19 and 23, meaning we had no real conception of what “a lot of money” was, let alone how much of it to spend versus save. But we knew a couple things for certain: we all wanted to be there, surrounded by the opportunity to brush shoulders with fame and glory. For a while, we had it all.
Last October, Grub Street published a story in which multiple current and former employees alleged missing paychecks and unpaid wages, alongside a slew of other financial and legal disputes tied to the business. By December, the Mott Street doors were boarded up for good.
Was I shocked? No. Unpaid wages were the reason I left in 2021. Larger and larger chunks of our paychecks kept disappearing. We were told the deductions were due to “new tax laws,” and they started at a whopping 50%. What could I say? “No, don’t do that to my check?” I mean, sure. But I was 22 at the time, naive in many ways — especially when it came to service gigs. The percentage of money taken out of our checks kept climbing. It went up every few weeks; eventually, it went up weekly. Finally, I tried to rally my coworkers to push back together, but most didn’t want to rock the boat. When I asked to see my pay stubs, I was told no.
There were a variety of other changes implemented, including Luc advising the waitresses to hem their aprons shorter. When I worked at Gitane, the hem fell right above the knees. He wanted them to fall around the upper thigh. I had frequently argued with Luc about the apron uniform — I didn’t like it, I often had to use my own money to fix the janky zipper, and if I didn’t wear it, I’d be reprimanded. “Next time you come in without your apron on, you’re done here,” Luc told me once when my apron was at the seamstress getting the zipper fixed again.
When I got a paycheck that was 70% less than it should have been, I came in for my next shift and chucked my apron and bandana at Luc. “I’m done,” I said.
“Who will work your shift?!” he called as I strutted away (toward nothing in particular, but in situations such as these, one must strut purposefully). Without turning around, I flipped him off. I knew I’d never get that money back, or the time spent soaking up oven fumes (during hotter months, the scent of smoke would stick to us oppressively). It felt like it was all for nothing.
Over the years, I still visited Gitane. I loved the food and the staff who remained: Angel Ramirez, head chef at Vinegar Hill; then-manager Isobel Lola Brown, author of Cafe Gitane: 30 Years.
But really, I always came back hoping to catch Dayvid Pinto, the Mott Street head chef who’d worked with Luc since 1998. Back when I worked there, he never yelled, even in the thick of a Saturday rush; he was the calm that kept the rest of us grounded. Every morning I worked, he made me a salmon tartine with the avocado carved into a rose, and he’d sneak olives into my second shift meal (baked pasta, duh) because he knew I loved them. He took care of us “Gitane Girls” (as regulars called us), making sure we were well-fed and as ready as we’d ever be for the onslaught of toast-desirers.
On paper, Dayvid was also the majority owner of the Vinegar Hill location, but Luc ran it. When it quietly closed this past August, Dayvid says he heard about it from someone else. The revelations of bounced checks and potentially forged signatures came after — but I’ll tell you more about that later.
Now, after what I thought was a permanent citywide closure, Cafe Gitane’s doors have reopened to the public.
I found out about the revived Cafe Gitane on October 16, a Friday afternoon, after its official Instagram account reposted stories from a teaser “underwear” opening party held the night before at the new East Broadway (aka Dimes Square, the modern equivalent to SoHo 30 years ago) location. Moments later, the account was deleted.
If this was a marketing stunt, it worked on me. I reached out to everyone I knew about the reopening, and found that Nima Garos is the new partner of Cafe Gitane. His involvement stands to be a lucrative partnership for Luc, given that Nima has his hands in a lot of New York hotspots: he co-founded the plant-based Mexican chain Jajaja, the Little Italy pasta spot Gelso & Grand and he owns Bar Nena, the mezcal-and-tepache speakeasy tucked beneath Jajaja’s West Village outpost. And now, his reimagined Cafe Gitane occupies a former location of Jajaja.
“We did an interesting deal,” Nima tells me later over the phone. “Luc has a lot of creative control, and I handle more of the finances and the logistics of day-to-day operations.”
Gitane’s Instagram account going down wasn’t a stunt either, Nima tells me. “It was a mistake.”
I go to the new Gitane location at 162 East Broadway on a Tuesday night, looking for some sentimentally delicious food and one Nima Garos. Really, though, I want to see if Luc is on an amends-making path, and whether or not he was able to capture the old magic of the original spot. With much luck (and a little bit of networking magic), I find both.
After arriving, my two friends and I sit down at the only table that isn’t a banquette. I turn, looking around the room, and I see that Luc is here, dining at a booth and chatting closely with someone. Luc eventually makes his way over with Elana Levin of Eleventh House PR. But before we talk, let me tell you about the room.
Ned’s Club Courts Gen Z With … Ping-Pong?
They say Gen Z can’t interact without an icebreaker. That’s not exactly what I discovered at Blu DeTiger’s exclusive ping-pong tournament.It really does look so beautiful, so true to the original — the maroon banquettes, the framed photo of Jimi Hendrix, the beloved mirror with scribbles of drink names behind the bar. Angel is working in the back, just like the good old days. Well, the old days anyway.
So much of Cafe Gitane’s original essence, Luc’s essence, has been retained. And I do, despite all of my baggage, love this place.
More importantly, according to Luc, the menu is 80% the same — the main difference is that this new space has a full kitchen, which means Luc could “finally add steak and pasta” to the menu. We opt for the classics (the hummus tzatziki dip, the baked feta dish, the chicken satay, the hachis Parmentier and, of course, a mini couscous with merguez) along with the new dishes (linguini duck ragu and skirt steak frites). I can confirm that the food is as tantalizing as it ever was.
Other things that remain the same: the famed lime green aprons and dark blue chore coats for staff uniforms, the retention of liqueur-based cocktails (I always enjoy a Kir Royale) alongside a full-service bar, a magazine rack and old photos of naked women. About five of the new space’s 12 staffers worked under Luc at the old locations, per Nima.
Seated behind us is a couple with their own Gitane history. According to Luc, by way of Elana, the woman was a maître d’ in Mott Street’s early days, and the man used to come in just to see her. That was 25 years ago. Now they’re married, and we got to watch them share their first meal at the new location. C’est la vie, c’est l’amour.
After a cigarette outside, I run (literally) into Nima. We do our introductions — I apologize for smelling like an ashtray, he tells me he quit smoking, we talk about our varied success in quitting things (I could learn a thing or two from him, I think to myself while I expel a gross smoker cough) — and then, of course, we talk about the elephant in the room. Or really, the elephant is the room itself.
He gives me what sounds like the official line: They pulled this space together through a “long five weeks” (I noticed the bathroom still smelled of recently dried paint), Luc is only involved in a creative capacity (“I mean, he’s a creative genius,” Nima tells me while gesturing to the room Luc designed) and that it all worked out perfectly.
“He kind of sits in there and lays out things a lot differently than most people,” Nima says. “There’s a weird method to the madness.”
Nima tells me that over Gitane’s three decades on Mott Street, the rent climbed from about $1,500 a month when the lease was signed in the ’90s to roughly $27,000 by the end. He also shares that, unlike himself, Luc didn’t have other restaurants where he could pull excess cash to plug the bleeding.
“It’s a numbers game. In the past he had no liquor license, and he had no ability to control the rent,” Nima says over the phone the next day. “With the new location, there’s just a shit ton of foot traffic … There’s even a takeout window.”
Still, there’s Gitane’s complicated past, which to many of us is a tough pill to swallow. I tell Nima as much. I wonder to myself if it is possible, in this case, to separate the art from the artist.
“I don’t know who Dayvid is, that was before my time,” Nima tells me. “From what I was told [by Luc], he’s gotten into a different line of work.”
Two days later, I call Dayvid myself.
“Your voice still sounds the same,” Dayvid chuckles through the phone. It’s been a couple of years. His does too, and I tell him how happy I am to hear it.
Dayvid owned 65% of Vinegar Hill, according to tax documents reviewed by InsideHook. “He owns nothing for that location,” he says of Luc. “He just had the brand, the name.” Dayvid says Luc ran it. Dayvid believes the rent went unpaid. When it closed, “he didn’t even call me, didn’t even tell me.”
What Dayvid was left with was a stack of paper: more than 20 bounced checks from Luc, he says, totaling around $20,000. He says other staff are owed too, including Carlos, a dishwasher of 25 years.
What worries him most are the checks and vendor accounts that he says Luc signed in Dayvid’s name. One, with a beer supplier, used Dayvid’s information but Luc’s email address. “So in case anything happened, they would talk to him, not to me,” he says. Dayvid shared documents with InsideHook, including checks and a vendor contract bearing his name and a signature he says is not his. He’s now facing vendor bills and the location’s unpaid sales tax, and he’s working with a city lawyer.
As for that “different line of work”: Dayvid is still a chef, now cooking 101 floors up at Peak in Hudson Yards. “[Luc] never invited me to work there,” he says of the new Gitane.
Still, like me, he has a soft spot for the place. “At the end of the day, I love Cafe Gitane,” he says. “But not Luc.”
Back at the restaurant that night, Luc had stopped by our table. We exchanged pleasantries, polite as always. Then, to my surprise, he brought up owing me money. I’d mentioned it to Elana in passing, but I’d long since made peace with never seeing it. How much? I couldn’t tell you exactly. A couple grand, maybe? Without pay stubs, I never really knew.
“Whatever money I owe you, just take my number down and I will pay it back,” he told me while holding my hand. “Realistically, I should have shut down Gitane a year before I did. But I loved the place. I was stubborn.”
All of this to perhaps imply, I should forgive him. It was a mistake. It was an unfortunate misstep. Luc is sorry, Luc has no money, but he does have the legacy of this beautiful restaurant.
I am sure he is sorry — it’s a year later and he still has to answer for his actions. As for my own stubborn nature: I suppose forgiveness is a virtue as much as memory is a burden. So it goes.
“It’s not necessary,” I said, shaking my head. I suspected he didn’t fully remember me. Closing a year earlier wouldn’t have changed anything for me; I’d left Gitane four years prior. How many of us were there, I wondered, that he couldn’t keep straight? I was, perhaps bitterly, uninterested in continuing the conversation, so I complimented the restaurant instead.
Later that night, Nima echoed Luc, almost verbatim. “Realistically, Luc should have closed a year prior to when he did,” he said. At this point, I told him that my work experience was back in 2021. Nima wasn’t aware of that. Then again, how would he be? That’s not exactly something that comes up when you’re negotiating a deal.
Luc did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
So much of your life happens on the clock, as my fellow brethren in the service trenches know. Friendships, falling in (and out of) love, partying, isolation. Most of that is true of any job, I suppose. But in a restaurant, you’re doing it all at once. The smile, the service, the shift meal inhaled in the basement, all while the full spectrum of your life plays out between tables.
Restaurants hold what feels like infinite timelines of lives lived. Mine is one of them. So is that couple’s, 25 years and counting. So is Carlos’s, 25 years washing dishes and pulling the gates down at the end of the night (as witnessed by me). So is Dayvid’s, nearly three decades at the stove, cooking up some of the best meals I, along with many other New Yorkers, have had. What a pity, then, that many of us were not compensated for our contributions. Perhaps, under this new partnership, the future of Cafe Gitane will be different than its past.
Before I left that night, a gleam had caught in Nima’s eye, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“What are the odds you’d work here again?” he asked me.
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