“Closed for Renovations” is often employed euphemistically in the restaurant business; it can mean anything from closed by order of the sheriff to actual renovations. I’ve been unable to confirm with the owners of the Middle Eastern restaurant Sally & George (7809 Third Avenue) why they’ve been closed for the last four months, but it seems unlikely that the reason is, as the signs on the windows claim, for “spring renovations”: not only is spring long gone, but also a peek through the window shows the interior unchanged and undisturbed; places are still set at all the tables, as though the restaurant had been abandoned at a moment’s notice.
From someone who knows someone who knows the owners, I heard that Sally and George is getting older and has decided to give up the restaurant (and redirect whatever resources he can to the luncheonette, Sally’s Coffee Shop, on the corner of 85th and Third). If that’s true, we’ll miss this Bay Ridge mainstay (since 1974!), mostly for the long vegetarian section on its menu; the old meze-for-two, an impossibly large selection of meat-free small plates, was one of my favorite meals in the neighborhood. The only thing I’ll miss more is the array in the vestibule of seemingly dozens of photographs of Alan Alda. And the handpainted mural on one wall depicting a bellydancing scene. And the hummus. And…well, not my favorite server, because I already spotted him waiting tables at Tanoreen.
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Sally died a few years ago, so maybe the upkeep of 2 places got to be too much for George.
Tried calling them the other day, the phone line’s been disconnected…