Goodbye Riviera Café after 48 years, and hello Miss Ruby’s Café in the heart of Sheraton Square in … [+]
or 48 long years, the bi-level Riviera Café was known as the nexus of nightlife in the West Village, located at Sheridan Square, across from the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the gay movement, and nearby cabarets Marie’s Crisis Café and the Duplex. But in August 2017, it closed.
For six years, the site stayed boarded up and vacant, a vestige of Greenwich Village’s heyday when nightlife flourished and the beatniks, hippies and rebel rousers prevailed. But there’s vitality again since Little Ruby’s Café, a local bar and eatery, opened on October 16 where the Riviera Café stood for over four decades.
Little Ruby’s Café, a bi-level space, is co-managed by Australian-born entrepreneurs Thomas Lim and Tim Sykes, who already run three locations, the original in Nolita, which opened 20 years ago, Murray Hill and the East Village. They say the menu has an Australian influence due to its many coffee offerings and focus on fresh produce.
A More Upscale Menu
The new menu is more upscale than the pub fare from Riviera Café and offers a spicy vodka pasta, fried chicken burger and crispy rice bowl. To continue their Aussie touch, the burgers are named after Australian beaches.
Now that the Riviera Café has faded, Little Ruby’s Café is aiming to create its own legacy in a changing Greenwich Village.
The West Village’s Little Ruby’s Café is open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. and will accommodate 100 patrons, with a full bar and covered patio.
Breakfast Starting Early
It offers classic breakfasts of two eggs with home fries and toast, a New York feature, breakfast burritos, ricotta hotcakes and for lunch crispy rice bowls, avocado salads, and fried chicken burgers.
The original Little Ruby’s Café was self-funded, as were the three expansions, so no loans or angel investors required for Lim and Sykes.
The two managing partners say its new café will be the first at the site to “offer a full bar with an extensive cocktail menu” and offer take-out and delivery.
When this reporter arrived unannounced without a reservation on opening night, he was lucky to get a bar stool. He ordered the chicken schnitzel and his friend Marc, the steak frites. The bartender Gabriel, a Greenwich Village native, was extremely hospitable.
On opening night, the restaurant was packed, mostly with Gen Zers, which said Danielle Berg, the eatery’s director of marketing, was attributable to social media postings and word-of-mouth.
Its target audience, the owners say, is “meant to cater to both locals, New Yorkers from across the city and visitors.”
How dynamic was Riviera Café in its heyday? In the early eighties, Gail Bradney, a freelance writer and author, worked as a waitress there. As she described it, she met “so many memorable and crazy characters and made wonderful friends—all young dreamers like myself.”
Celebrities Galore at the Famed Riviera Cafe
And she encountered a range of celebrities dining and drinking there, including author James Baldwin, musician Lou Reed, actor Amanda Plummer and countless folk musicians from Folk City including Phoebe Snow.
As Bradley phrases it, “Supermodels, jazz musicians, writers, famous drag queens, even politicians—everyone went to the Riviera at one time or another. It was the heartbeat of the West Village. And an easy place to meet—everyone knew the place.”
Living in a cheap apartment in the East Village, Bradney could make her entire monthly rent in a single weekend night.
She noted that the food wasn’t anything special, “but no one cared.” And it was marred by the AIDS crisis, when she lost many colleagues to the epidemic.
“For nearly 50 years, the corner of the Riviera Café was a gathering spot for the Village, and Little Ruby’s Café is meant to continue its legacy by serving the neighborhood as place for a great meal, coffee and cocktails,” said its owners.