West Village Neighborhood Bistro Café Loup Will Reopen Today

<a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/cafe-loup-new-york?select=AzL-7PY60CtfkoA8t_c6kA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">via Yelp</a>

After being shuttered earlier this month due to unpaid taxes, beloved neighborhood French bistro Café Loup is reopening later today. It will officially open its doors again to the West Village at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday for regular dinner service.

Loup, which first opened in 1977 and moved to its permanent home at 105 West 13th Street in the early '80s, was shuttered last Wednesday after being seized by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. A Tax Deptartment spokesperson told us there were four open warrants with a balance of $188,394.40 at the time. "Seizing a business is always a last resort," spokesperson James Gazzale. "Generally speaking, after seizing a business, we continue being in communication with the owner looking for mutually beneficial ways to resolve that debt. Once we find a way forward, and feel confident enough to return the keys to the business, we do so."

Thankfully, they were able to resolve the matter in a week; the owners of Café Loup declined to comment on how things were resolved, or whether they are still in danger of closing again.

Photo courtesy Caroline Eisenmann

In the wake of the closing, there was an outpouring of support from locals and regulars for the cafe, which was known as a fixture for the city’s literary and publishing scene (counting Paul Simon, Susan Sontag, and Paul Auster among its regulars). Sadie Stein wrote in The New Yorker, "Loup was a place with serious regulars; neighbors who dined and drank there literally every night, poets and publishers who held down favorite banquettes, older people who were treated with kindness and respect...I sort of thought I’d become inured to treasured places closing in New York. But this one hurts. I loved Café Loup, not more than anyone else but the way a great number of people did."

"It was an important professional space, a living room among friends, a place to take meetings and to celebrate and to recharge," added Caroline Eisenmann, a literary agent for Frances Goldin Literary Agency, and a Loup regular.