Thanks to Nitzan for the tip and photo.
Scroll to the bottom for a recent statement we received from the restaurant owners.
A sign in the window of 2672 Broadway (at West 102nd Street) says a new restaurant called Abigail’s is “coming soon.” This space has been occupied by Street Taco since May 2022.
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“Really? It took a year-and-a-half to get that place ready. I’m surprised it’s closed already,” said one local of Street Taco. Musing on the Upper West Side restaurant’s quality, he said it had good drinks and specialty tacos but the standard fare wasn’t too great. “They had great drinks and great unique tacos like the raw tuna tacos. But the traditional Mexican tacos weren’t that good,” said the local, who asked to remain anonymous.
Rachael Doob, who works across the street at the Grape Collective wine shop, said she too was surprised to hear Street Taco had left. “That’s interesting. It’s too bad they didn’t stick around very long,” she said. Doob didn’t know anything about Abigail’s but welcomed a new business to the neighborhood. “We could use a little more action and activity around here.”
Street Taco filled the void left by longtime restaurant Mexican Festival, which had been there since about 2014. In fact, the site has hosted a string of Mexican establishments in recent years. Before Mexican Festival there was Maria Bonita, and that replaced Mama Mexico, which was there at least as far back as 2009.
It turns out that Abigail’s will be coming from the same owners. And based on conflicting reports, it’s unclear if Street Taco will technically be “closing.”
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The landlord first told us that the owners – Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group – will be closing Street Taco because it didn’t meet their expectations. “It wasn’t as successful as they had hoped it would be,” said Alex Hirsch of Milbrook Properties. He added that Abigail’s will be “American food but weird, cool weird. A little bit international. It’ll be different,” he said, adding that it will have a “speakeasy decor” and is likely to open in about a month.
We called Street Taco’s location at 358 Third Avenue and the person we spoke with confirmed that Abigail’s would be coming from the same owners. That’s all they said.
This morning, we got some additional details from Laurie Marshall, an Upper West Side trademark attorney (and the owner of Trademarks The Spot) who spoke with the general manager last night. The manager told her that the space will become a bit of a hybrid, with Abigail’s in the front and a takeout area for Street Taco in the back. Abigail’s will be a SoCal concept with ‘wine-bar vibes,’ the manager told her.
UPDATE (Feb. 16): We just received the following statement from the owners:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”16″] Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group is thrilled to announce the upcoming March opening of Abigail’s, a new all-day neighborhood restaurant located at 2672 Broadway (at 102nd St) on New York’s Upper West Side. The southern California-inspired, 100-seat restaurant is overseen by chef Ash Fulk, who is both a resident of the neighborhood and a California native and is looking forward to bringing his two favorite parts of the country together.I grew up in California, but I call the Upper West Side home,” said Fulk. “Abigail’s is a blend of the best of both worlds, combining the food and vibe of the California coast with the traditions and energy of New York City.
In keeping with the neighborhood’s long tradition of diners and cafes, Abigail’s will feature robust lunch, brunch, and dinner services.
In addition, FLHG’s Street Taco, which has been in the space since 2022, will still be available for takeout and delivery in the neighborhood.
I really wanted to like the place and gave it two tries. Why do new restaurants nowadays all copy one another with huge bright ugly TVs over the bar that ruin the ambience and loud music that makes conversation difficult? Maybe I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem to result in success most of the time.
This restaurant, with the same owners and a series of different names, has never been great. The first iteration was the best, but I stopped going when the food declined, and I realized that they purposely make the specials double or triple the price of the regular items and didn’t disclose the price when they described them, sneaky upselling. It’s just continued a long slow decline over the years, with apparently pretty good drinks but not so good food. Maybe the owners, who have repeatedly changed the name but not much else of their restaurant would actually try to do something great.
Couldn’t agree more — this was one of those “let’s stiff the gringos; they don’t know any better” kind of places no matter the name on the door with watered-down drinks with way, way too much ice (so I stopped ordering them) to schlocky Tex-Mex food that didn’t even taste good coming straight out of the microwave (so I stopped going). I cry for the days of Los Panchos (off Columbus on 70th or 71st St) and even the chain, Carambas, (one on B’way betw. 95th-96th once that Columbia condo was constructed and at least one more on 8th Ave in the low to middle 50s) when Mexican food may have been Tex-Mex but (a) tasted fresh (b) ample, delicious portions and well-priced and prepared specials along with (c) really high-octane, tasty margaritas, great sangria and fabulous as picante as you could handle guacamole. It’s too easy to rip diners off now and so this is what these restaurant “managers” decide to do. I’m sorry but the beef steak in these places tastes like dog meat or what I imagine that would taste like and the chicken is almost always breast-meat (rather than the more moist dark meat of thighs) and is dry, old and chewy. Please don’t bother opening another one of these, PLEASE.
Agree completely. I liked Caramba!, too.
The article describes a restaurant that has failed before even opening. It’s not that hard to make good tacos either, coming from a native Texan and Mexican-American (not to downplay our food.) But when you change cuisine drastically like this as if it’s just a theme, it shows you have no business in the food industry. Must be nice to have that much money to throw around on half-hearted gimmicks.
I agree with all of the comments here. Abigail’s mish mosh description lacks a true chef’s POV. This space keeps failing. The ingredients to succeed on the UWS are simple: Make delicious food and people will come.
Dear Lifelong UpperWest Sider,
You haven’t tried the food yet but you know it’s going to fail, and you think it doesn’t have a true Chef point of view, but again you haven’t tried it, you are just going off this random article? You must be fun at dinner parties!
Love,
Real New Yorker whose mantra is just PROVE IT TO ME!
Disagree vehemently with the above comments. Street Taco shocked us from the start because the food was absolutely great, fresh, flavorful and authentic. Bartender was personable and vibe was young and fun, and LGBTQ friendly as well. Sorry to see this go. If replacing the Mexican menu, what this neighborhood needs is a resto akin to the great Friedman’s. Elevated, sophisticated, dependable American menu with fresh ingredients, at a great price point. Ellington’s reopening was a promise of that, but failed… it feels like a Marriott hotel restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. Even better would be a Keith McNally resto. Why do we need to always go downtown for great restaurant experience??
TOTALLY agree. I LOVED this place, it was much needed on a stretch of nothing restaurants on Broadway. I’m so upset.
I totally disagree with the negative comments about Street Taco, it doesn’t matter if it wasn’t real Mexican food, the food was delicious. The Taco Salad was AMAZING and the nachos EVEN BETTER. The vibe of the place was phenomenal… I just have good words for them and I’m sad to see them go
We just had dinner at Abigail’s last night and oh my gosh, it was the worst. First, they served burnt, dry, cold toast (with the steak tartare).
They waited a long time to touch the table, so I was just sitting there trying to catch someone’s eye. Then, when I asked for new toast, they took over ten minutes to send it out. What they sent was bizarre — cooking-oil soaked slices of some kind of roll. They were literally oozing with flavorless cooking oil. When the server dropped them off, he said “I hope this will be more palatable to you”, and I had to say well look, they’re dripping in oil, and waiter tried to just take my steak tartare away and “move on”. ! I’ve worked in the industry for years and I’ve never seen a less generous, more confused service. When he returned ten minutes later with dry slices of the roll again (why did the bread change? It changed to odd sub-par bread), he said I was like Goldilocks. Gross.
Hoped we were done with the tomfoolery, but I had ordered the salmon for entree, which apparently is akin to asking for trouble because it came lacking the promised glaze, without Brussels sprouts (they were listed second in the dish, so I thought they’d feature), and with a “fried rice” made of steamed quinoa and a bit of rice. I had ordered the fish medium, to which the waiter’s response was “that’s how the chef recommends it” and it came well done, skin side up (for salmon? Guys?). Bizarre.
I had given up on having a good meal at the entrance of the oily toast. I kindly and with curiosity asked the server about the discrepancies, and he said “I don’t think it says Brussels sprouts on the menu. It’s bok choy.” I just sat there and let him reference it because I didn’t even know what to say… it was supposed to have both. After he checked the menu he then took my fork (!) and I had to sit there going “what is happening” as he proceeded to dig through the “fried rice”, saying “I think they’re just covered up in there”. He could not find one sprout, I could not find a shred of class in the shenanigans we were witnessing. I asked for the smash burger because it seemed hard to mess up, and the fries came soaked again in that tasteless cooking oil, but it was otherwise fine. The waiter whisked half of the burger away and didn’t offer a box. Also, it’s fair to note that I was not rude or judgey. My husband and I were like “ok bizarre, but we’re having fun regardless”, and we did that for our part.
A manager had stopped by after the second bad toast try, but he never came around again except to eventually bring us the check. There’s so much more that happened which was bizarre, but I am aware this is already a lengthy missive… It was just bush league all over the place — two other tables had major issues with their food within our hearing over the course of the meal.
We got to pay $120 for these many pleasant moments after they took off the tartare, a drink (no real reason), and the uneaten salmon, but charged us for the burger. I guess that’s alright, but it felt like injustice at that point. I went to finish my glass of wine before leaving (cherry house by villa creek Grenache blend) and there was an insane amount of sediment in the bottom of the glass. Like no one told the bartender “this bottle has sediment, so you can’t just dump the last of it in a glass”. 1/5th of the glass wasn’t drinkable.
Here’s hoping they change things completely and we get a nice neighborhood restaurant. For now you’ll have to head somewhere else for toast.