Beloved Cobble Hill Restaurant Brucie To Close After Five Years, Sorry

Brucie, a darling Cobble Hill restaurant that unflinchingly offers $10 sides of bacon, is packing it in after five and a half years in business. This is bad news for the many locals who enjoyed chef and owner Zahra Tangorra's reliably tasty and inventive Italian entrees, and even worse news for anyone who would sooner swim in a shark volcano than read a verklempt "Goodbye to All That" essay penned by a restaurant. Well, they did, and we'll reprint the whole thing here, because the sound of your groaning amuses me:

Dear New York,

How do I explain how deeply I love you? Your vivaciousness, your energy, your people, the smell of your hair.......

It has been my greatest honor to be in this relationship with you these past 5 1/2 years. Every day that we spent together was a new adventure. I felt privileged to have lasted in a love affair with such a fickle and fiery partner , knowing that the tenure of our union was in fact a testament to my character as well. When you bestowed gifts upon me, when your inhabitants filled my room, when your critics sang my praise, the world stopped. I never imagined that I could have lasted so long with someone like you, and the fact that you showed me love for so long and love so great has made my life feel like it meant something.

But, as you might be sensing from the mellow dramatic tone of this letter, I need to say goodbye. I need to move on and find my peace, my real purpose, my grown up identity. Every second was a gift and a pleasure and while you will probably soon forget me, please know I will never forget you or what you have done for me, it has meant everything, and I will love you the most for the rest of my life.

Goodbye New York, I will be closing my doors February 15th. I don't know where I am going , but I know where I have been, and it was in the arms of the greatest city in the whole wide world. My staff and I look forward to all the new adventures and opportunity you have to share. While this part of our relationship is over, I really think and hope we can stay friends. Thank you. I love you. Take care.

Oh, you left your toothbrush here, I'm just going to throw it out.......

Love,

Brucie

In fairness, Brucie isn't the only one upset by the loss of Brucie. The Awl's co-founder and self-described frequent overeater Choire Sicha had this to say:

Brucie was a beautiful exercise in hard work and idealism and the sheer power of will. When I would spy on Zahra furiously cooking, and look out over a restaurant full of second dates and parents with kids and just pals meeting up, it reminded me that maybe living in this jerk-town and working to build something could be worth it. One of my favorite things to do in all of New York was to sit quietly at Brucie's bar and read and eat the completely madcap crostini of the day. For me, Brucie was right up there with the Metropolitan Museum and the Ziegfeld Theater for wonderful and moody and nostalgia-inducing New York places. I should just be happy that it lived that long! I hope everyone who worked at Brucie over the years is very proud.

And this, from writer Lindsay Robertson:

I should have known something was up last Thursday night, when I brought a table of newbies to Brucie and said "This is my favorite restaurant." A staff member overheard me and said "Did you just say this is your favorite restaurant?" and gave a strange smile that I now realize must have been rueful.

Brucie was one of those places where it never mattered what you ordered: it would always be not only the best version of itself, but would have a specialness and originality to it that you could never replicate at home, usually in the form of something tangy. And don't even get me started on the staff, who would do crazy-thoughtful things that broke all the sniffy laws of New York dining, like saving the last table for you while you ran down the street to grab lost members of your party. I love Brucie. It is my favorite restaurant, and I don't know what I'm going to do. (Also, that wallpaper! Save me a slice, Zahra, so I can frame it!)

I went to Brucie once and was impressed by the food, but I was also painfully hungover and deeply put off by the hefty bacon price tag. I do recall appreciating that the waitress didn't openly mock me when I asked that half a slice of New York's most opulent pork product be placed in a box for me to take home to eat later. Also, the bathroom was nice and cool and would have made a fine place to curl up on the floor for a minute, not that I know anything about that.

The news comes just one month after we listed Brucie—located at 234 Court Street—as one of our "12 Best Brunch Spots Of NYC," so do with that what you will.