The Brooklyn Paper: SNA Newspaper of the Year, 2007

The current issue
By Neighborhood
Not Just Nets
GO Brooklyn
Perspective
Parenting
Brooklyn Cyclones
The Brooklyn Bride
Brooklyn Boom
Classifieds
About The Paper
RSS Feeds
Hall Street Storage

A long rest for LI Restaurant

By Merritt Gurley
for The Brooklyn Paper
Enlarge this image
The Brooklyn Paper / Merritt Gurley
The Long Island Restaurant has been closed for months — and no one knows what’s up.

Share this story

digg
del.icio.us

When the Long Island Restaurant, a decades-old fixture at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street, closed in August, a note on the door suggested the eatery was just shuttered for a short vacation.

It’s now a nine-month respite.

The three owners — Emma, Maria and Pepita Sullivan — had shut it down to spend the fall in their home country of Spain.

But tragedy struck.

The fall trip extended into winter and then spring after the family matriarch, who is in her 100s, fell and became bedridden, said Brandie Burns, a Sullivan family friend.

Then, one of the Sullivan sisters’ sons died, extending the delays.

“It is heartbreaking,” said Burns. “They are all broken up right now.”

Brooklyn Bridge Realty

The Long Island Restaurant has been a favorite neighborhood haunt for 56 years and locals eagerly await its reopening. Indeed, the place looks ready to open at any time — a dishrag and glasses are still on the bar, as if the place was closed merely for the night.

The eatery’s neon sign, scrolled in classic 1950s style, was a community landmark and with the lights out, the neighborhood doesn’t feel the same, said Burns.

“It was the kinda place you could go to just hang out and relax,” said Burns, who added that Emma, Maria and Pepita’s kids are “busy doing their own thing,” and have little interest in carrying on the family tradition.

Burns said the Sullivans remain “hopeful about reopening.”

“They’ll never sell it,” he said.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

< Cinema: More than ‘Zero’
Crime: Third death at the Gregory >

Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.

Buffalo Wild Wings
Water Street Restaurant
La Bagel Delight
Perelandra