Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

restaurants.rip

181 pointsgregsadetsky91 comments

Hey HN! I go a bit about the project on the about [0] page, but wanted to chime in here as well.

It’s been a project long in the making - it started in 2019, before everything shut down/changed. The list of closed restaurants I found - for New York only - was already really long. So now (that I have time to work on it at recurse.com) it really felt like I needed to do something about it.

When a restaurant (or any business) shows up on Google Maps as “permanently closed”, in that bright red font, there’s always a tiny bit of a pang of sadness. It’s definitely more than a pang when you look for a place you loved and expected to visit again.

The project’s “aesthetic” is inspired by early 2000s funeral homes’ websites. The combination of funeral + restaurant is what made it click for me. Maybe what we long for is a place to share our losses? Maybe.

Thanks for checking it out! :)

[0] https://restaurants.rip/about

Open articleView on HN

Too bad they don't have Toronto listed. There was a place called Il Gato Nero on College St that had been in a couple locations in the area for about 50 years. The family has a new and different location in Etobicoke, but I spent probably 20 years drinking coffee at its College bars and they were an anchor for the street and neighbourhood.

If you were from downtown, it was where a lot of our stories and memories happened. You knew legends about people who you saw there but might not have talked to much. I left the city shortly after it closed because there wasn't anything to replace the life it made possible, where you could spend a saturday morning with a newspaper at the bar that served real food and make small talk with strangers. You might learn their names and what they did after a decade of seeing them, but it didn't matter. I still pop into the new place once in a while to pick up the coffee that is like nowhere else and it's worth the trip, but the downtown chapter is closed.

Same with La Hacienda on Queen St. Those two spots were landmarks of the city and its culture, and when they went, they took a lot of the coherence of the stories of people who grew up in them with them. Brunch tables full of punks, goths, and rockers wearing last nights makeup at La Hacienda usually with some awful local hardcore blaring over the speakers and farcically hostile service were what defined Queen st. People there were legends too. You'd see them and hear stories about them even if you'd never been introduced, and everyone would always talk about how they knew each other when.

Pandemic policies killed those places and also destroyed the culture of the city, so I left. I'm sure new people will make new memories, but it takes generations to make anything like that again.

Thanks for all of this! I’ll definitely be adding more cities. I miss a lot of places in Montreal as well.

Legitimately cool story

Awesome stories and writing that gave me intense second-hand nostalgia if that makes sense. I'm always pleasantly surprised to read about places I'm familiar with on HN. Thank you for sharing.

If you don't mind my asking, where did you move to?

Thanks! I went rural, but still southwestern Ontario, looking at going out west or just leaving Canada altogether next.

If I had a loonie for the number of times I’ve seen Canadians say that… I still couldn’t afford a house here.

Le Select...

Funny, I edited out the line about Le Select and Bar Italia:)

Forbes Island is on there. I miss that place so much. https://restaurants.rip/r/forbes-island-restaurant-pier-san-...

Bug report: I tried to submit a remembrance there but this page it sent me to returned a 404:

https://restaurants.rip/r/forbes-island-restaurant-pier-san-...

Update: I force refreshed the original page and submitted again and it worked.

Thanks, Simon! And apologies re: 404, I just switched around the POST url route (in the Django project) :-) probably just as you were submitting.

Tempting the demo gods are we :-)

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/forbes-island-sf-float...

It's not just early 2000s aesthetics (I wouldn't know specifically about funeral homes, I didn't visit those pages then, nor do I now, it's the one line of business when I still find out I need to go directly or by word-of-mouth and then just physically go there :) ), it seems the site has no trackers, no anti-social media badges, etc.

I love it, thanks for sharing!

It reminded me of Geocities, just a hobby site with no intentions other than being a hobby site. I hope you can maintain this one for a long time, and doing so gives you joy!

BC Burrito, Kaimuki HI deserves a section here. Their seasoned potato burrito (add carnitas) is still without a doubt the best burrito I have ever tasted. https://bcburrito.wordpress.com/about/

I am seeing a lot of "Burger King" and whatnot in LA - you might want to filter for corporate noise.

I have very fond memories of the McDonalds near my childhood home

That potato burrito was fantastic! I wouldn't recognize that place by name, but I still remember how good that burrito was.

Kaimuki has had some great places come and go. Years ago there was a Japanese restaurant (called Restaurant Ko or Izakaya Restaurant Ko) that had a fantastic Kaiseki style menu. It was one of the best Japanese meals I've ever had.

The most memorable thing about this location was their Ms Pac-man cocktail table game.

This makes me think about this blog post I read once and often think about; looking at the restaurants and clubs featured in American Psycho and “where are they now?”

https://www.scoutingny.com/patrick-batemans-new-york-what-ha...

I love the author’s conclusion that ultimately the trendiest, hottest place with a line out the door and no chance of getting in is an abstract cultural concept. Often just a box that will soon go back to being just a box (or a baby carriage showroom.)

Last June, I was on my honeymoon in Tuscany, Italy, and had a delightful experience that highlighted how restaurants leave a lasting impression on us, not only for their food but also for the people. I was in the tiny medieval village of Monteriggioni [1] and used Google Maps to find the nearest restaurants. I discovered one with excellent reviews [2] and decided to have lunch there with my spouse to take a break from exploring. The service was exceptional, with a very friendly waiter who interacted with all the tables, especially the children, bringing smiles to our faces. The food was delicious, and the prices were more reasonable than in Florence, where we were staying.

During dessert, an American tourist woman approached our table. Interestingly, she had just entered the restaurant and was eager to ensure everyone was having a good time. She explained, 'You see, I first came to this fantastic restaurant 25 years ago, had a wonderful experience, and got to know the owner, whom the staff sadly told me had passed away last summer. Now, I'm back with my family to relive that journey.' She then greeted my wife and me and went on her way.

I then said to my spouse: "Let's make this trip back here and check this restaurant 25 years from now" ;)

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteriggioni

[2] http://www.letorrimonteriggioni.it/

There's a place at the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna named Cascate del Dardagna - this is where Italians go to cool off during the summer because it's so high up in the mountains that the temperatures are actually bearable. They were really surprised to see us - foreigners - there.

In the vicinity there's a hotel with a restaurant, the owner of which is quite the character - he doesn't have a smartphone and doesn't really use the internet. His hobbies include making liquor from blueberries he buys from his forager friend and making knives out of horns of deer he buys from a hunter friend, who provides him with meat served in the restaurant.

Italy is really something if you go off the usual path and speak the language.

I would love to see one where somebody has added a remembrance, but all the restaurants I click on are empty.

I’ll definitely add a list with the latest remembrances! Thanks for the suggestion.

We need an internet archive but for Google Maps.

It would be cool to have a feature like that, similar to how you could see previous years in Street View. Closed restaurants are preserved on Yelp, maybe there might be a way to extract that somehow and put it on OpenStreetMaps…

OpenStreetMap is for currently existing features (or currently existing remains, ruins can be mapped). So if for example sign remains, it can be mapped. But once fully gone: it is not mappable in OSM.

See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nonexistent_features

In addition we cannot import data from Google Maps or use Street View due to licencing terms.

https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ collects also objects gone without any remains remaining visible. Not sure about their handling of licensing.

That’s really interesting to learn, thanks.

If it were up to me, I’d recommend keeping it with a flag that notes it as closed, rather than deleting it. (Just as you can mark a row in a database as deleted and not physically delete it). I know it’s not that simple. :)

I’ve seen cases on Google Maps where a previously bookmarked restaurant, after having closed, will completely disappear there. It used to be that bookmarks of closed places would still work for some time - you could still read the reviews and see the photos.

But now, I’m finding more and more of these bookmarks just pointing to a lat,lng point. True digital rot/loss. It’s really sad when that happens - that was one of the impetuses for creating this site.

> If it were up to me, I’d recommend keeping it with a flag that notes it as closed, rather than deleting it.

OpenStreetMap has you covered with a so-called lifecycle prefix: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix

As long as there are traces - it can be kept `disused:amenity=restaurant` rather than `amenity=restaurant` etc.

But once fully gone it should be removed - this way OSM data can be always verified/updated by visiting a given place, without being aware of now gone objects there. And keeps it objective - otherwise you would run into big discussion "where was this restaurant closed 20 years ago?"

Or "how this castle was structured in year 1450" where you often have multiple competing reconstructions.

I'm confused by the cities. Most of the restaurants under San Jose weren't in San Jose. And many of those were in San Francisco. But there's a San Francisco section.

Sorry, you're right! My geo math is a bit wrong, especially for cities that are nearby i.e. SF and San Jose (vs New York)

I'll definitely investigate.

My favorite restaurant was an Indonesian restaurant in Wheaton, MD (suburb of Washington, DC) called Sabang.

They closed 10+ years ago, and I still miss them dearly. I have searched far and wide for Rendang (or generally good Indonesian food) that was as good as what we had at Sabang, and haven't found any (good ones) in the DC area. My wife is sick of hearing me lament about Sabang's closure even 10+ years later (although she still feels bad for me).

The closest I found was a place in LA called Borneo Kalimantan. So whenever I'm in LA, I make it a point to eat there.

I instantly thought of Sabang when I saw this site.

How can you add a new place? If you want to avoid spam you could maybe ask for a Yelp link or something which you could scrape.

There's plenty of really good restaurants which I've loved and have closed, from glitzy cities to war zones, but one fairly normal place sticks out in my mind - a sloppy joe shack off the side of interstate 87 north of NYC in the corner of a Yonkers parking lot. The genre of classic American places where you can find ridiculous portions of very unhealthy food executed perfectly is rapidly dying out and anywhere around NYC it is practically extinct, but this place did it perfectly. My God, what could be more American than a sloppy joe shack? Eight dollars cash got you a quantity of meat, homemade french fries and toppings sufficient to feed a midsized European city for three months, and it was all done so well - brioche bun, good meat, very good homemade fries, shoved into a large cardboard box.

It's funny, because ten or twenty years ago the list of unhealthy all-American-huge-portions-done-right was a mile long wherever you'd go. You didn't even have to check the internet, you could just drive around until you found the right mix of cars outside and you'd know. Now the genre is as good as dead in large parts of the country and dying in the rest. You go into a diner and find that it's under new management by skinny hipsters and you just want to cry. It's the same ultra-processed-bullshit but now it's been rearranged by some jackoff without taste buds and downsized to fit in a teacup. I eat healthy, sane portions at home, I'm here for a reason, just give me a big pile of red-blooded-American-garbage-god-Damn-it!

If anyone else knows of any other true-American places in or near NYC, let me know :)

info@restaurants.rip to add a new place right now, but I’ll definitely add a “submit” form today, thank you!

I’m also in NYC, so I’d love to hear what you find.

Thanks, I'll add it later then! and yes, if I find anything, I'll send an email, but unfortunately I'm not optimistic. We'll see if HN knows anything...

The much loved Shopsin's was one of a kind not just for the food but also its gruff but lovable chef Kenny Shopsin. Documentary: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0390109/ Profiled by Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker: https://web.archive.org/web/20230313065345/https://www.newyo... Unique Menu rules: https://www.kottke.org/04/08/shopsins-menu

Shopsin's is not closed! They are now at Essex Market (Essex and Delancey, in the Lower East Side). Next building over from me. I think some of Kenny's offspring took it over (but not sure of that). Not quite as fun as the old place, but still a pretty quirky menu.

Not closed but not nearly like the Shopsin's of old :( Kenny & Eve were the key ingredient.

Fair enough.

Would be nice to list college campuses. At NJIT there were a few food trucks. The best one in my opinion was a blueish truck with an old lady on the side. Had amazing food and great prices. The guy who ran the truck also loved to talk to people. He was going through a rough patch and mentioned that he was loosing money. Didn't want to raise prices but it was becoming too expensive to run. Closed after my freshman year.

NJIT had some cool grease trucks. I remember going there for a gaming minicon once and the lunch was much better than anything I could have expected. I went to MSU, so I wasn't as close to it as some; but I remember the food.

(Made a HN account just for this) I recall two food trucks, either the Sahara or the Taj Mahal. Whichever one it was with the old lady with the pictures of her and happy students plastered on the truck. Their chicken over rice was a healthy portion for 11 bucks IIRC, and one line of that hot sauce would clear out your sinuses. Sad to hear that one had closed up, probably due to the campus being mostly closed during the pandemic.

Cho’s Mandarin Dim Sum, California ave, Palo Alto (briefly moved to Los Altos before Cho retired). Open to suggestions for a replacement within 50 miles.

And now that I’m hungry and fantasizing, Flints BBQ on Shattuck in Oakland. Ribs in peace.

And “Toms” - The Little Garden on El Camino in Mountain View with the wall of Sun Microsystems business cards. Some folks (no doubt still around on HN) started an ISP in the Bay Area named after it.

Any chance to add a map? I ate a great pasta in NYC when visiting with my girlfriend (2018=. Two years later (January 2020) I went to the same place with my dad and he liked it too. Then, I went two years later (2022) and it wasn't there anymore. I'd love to leave a message but I have no idea about the name.

The restaurant model has such incredibly high turnover and failure rate.

We think we want things to go back to the way they were, but really we just want to be young again.

To be more constructive, would be cool to tie in some connection to the present. For example, ad model for the new restaurant that is there now.

I've seen restaurants with great food close because of terrible business sense, and I've also seen a few closings recently of long-standing places where the owners wanted to retire and couldn't find anyone they'd trust that would take over. COVID amplified these effects for a time too.

I'm sure a higher fraction of closing restaurants are mid (or worse), but by raw numbers there are many places legitimately worth memorializing. Associated personal memories are a thing of course, but there are multiple closed spots that I feel were inherently very good and have not properly been replaced in my area.

That takes me back: No Name in Boston. Right by the shipyard. Navy ppl would fly in allegedly to check on the schematics in person but really to get the chowder and fried mixed seafood platter there.

well, I wasn't expecting to see tailwind in the source... :)

Was going to say this looks like a perfect use case for Django and yep - you confirmed in the comments - is Django :)

This is funny, nice.

Have been into Gordon Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares lately, most of the restaurants featured are now closed. That might be a fun list of restaurants to celebrate.

Shout out to the lost CIBO at the Creekside Inn in Palo Alto, pushed out due to their corporate overlords' desire to scrap the inn and build condos.

RIP Goood Frikin' Chicken in SF.

Held on for a long time through Covid, but finally gave up without reopening the dining room again.

https://sf.eater.com/2022/6/17/23172806/goood-frikin-chicken...

This is sobering. Just found out a couple beloved restaurants in the city I called home, and moved out of a year ago, are gone.

Never mind, both of these places are still open. Hm, wonder what happened there?

Could you tell me what places these are - here, or info@restaurants.rip? Thanks

Did the places move and get a new address?

will drop an email, thanks :)

Reminds me of https://killedbygoogle.com/

Makes me wonder. Is there a market for something like Upvoty (to gauge interested) + Kickstarter (to get commitment) for dead projects?

Or at the v least, showing possible alternatives. After all, life is about moving forward.

Beautiful project, thanks for sharing.

How are you liking Recurse?

(Also I didn’t see Trouble in the SF list, in case you’re looking for places to add.)

Thank you!

Recurse is amazing. Truly an amazing gathering of accomplished, interesting and curious folks. It’s an amazing community and setting - if you can swing the 6 or 12 weeks, and especially if you can come to the physical space in downtown Brooklyn, I would very much recommend it.

Lots of Recursers end up on the HN homepage these days - from https://jvns.ca to https://jakelazaroff.com ‘s series on CRDTs. I think there’s a connection between the Recurse and HN communities, and an appreciation of what Recursers tend to gravite towards (personal projects that are meaningful to its creators, and are typically about explaining, exploring or building something new).

Feel free to email me to talk more about it.

As for Trouble, thanks for the suggestion! I’ll be adding it, on top of all of the other places that people have been mentioning.

When a restaurant closes that is functionally identical to every other franchisee, like an Applebees, Olive Garden, Burger King, etc., it doesn't need a remembrance because you can just go to a different one. Like, if there are twelve identical clones of you when die, is it really an occasion for mourning?

Yeah that’s an interesting point.

Although I see what you mean, I imagine that any particular Burger King etc could still have felt “significant” - imagine someone who stopped there regularly, or had memories of going there with a relative. Or the people who worked there for a year or 20.

I definitely remember a specific McDonald’s to which my mom often brought me as a child. I remember what seat we’d always pick. So… it’s meaningful..! :) If that McD closed, I’d definitely feel something.

Even chain restaurants can be special to people. Maybe it’s the McDonald’s across the street from school where everyone hung out after class, or the Denny’s that was the only place open at 2 AM in college. Maybe you met your first love at that corner Starbucks, or celebrated a business deal at that Applebees next to the hotel on a work trip.

There’s plenty of ways that people and events can make an otherwise unremarkable place memorable.

I have some nostalgia for the fast food chain place I worked at as a kid, ages ago. Same building, same rough layout, though everything else is different. I don't get the same vibe around other existing locations of the same chain.

I know of a small single-state chain of pizza restaurants with unique whole wheat crust unlike any other I’ve had, and I’ve looked. I’ve tried to recreate it at home, haven’t gotten terribly close. The chain only lasted about 15 years. I don’t know of any place that makes a substitute for what they made.

I do know a place that makes pizza pretty close to an early 90s Pizza Hut pie. It’s like $20+ a pizza, because that’s what early 90s Pizza Hut would cost if they hadn’t been cutting quality to keep the the price relatively stable, for the last two-plus decades. So that’s nice.

RIP Crackers Grill, 582 Sutter St, San Francisco. We loved going there on vacations out west, circa 2000-2003.

I knew other people felt the same way! There was this coffee shop I always hanged out, which recently "permanently closed" as the owner died RIP. It is really hard to explain that feeling, which I literally can't. But awesome idea!

Aux Derniers Humaines in Montreal, what a fabulous place that was, best omelettes on earth.

Didn't see a way to add new ones...

RIP Snacky. Oh how I loved my weekly pilgrimage to you. The spice in the air, the steam rising off the Bibim Bop, and the warm glow of anime playing on the television behind the bar. You're fondly missed.

There was a restaurant called Flavor in Half Moon Bay that had probably my favorite burger ever, of all time/places. They shut down a few years ago. I didn't find that one in your SF/SJ listings, probably just out of range!

Just added it, thank you! https://restaurants.rip/r/flavor-capistrano-rd-half-moon-bay

I wonder how many restaurants in NYC make it onto this list lol. Some of the best restaurants in the world only survive 2-3 years here. The number of RIPs is astounding.

If someone expanded this idea to long dead products (Bebo, Doritos 3D etc.) I'd imagine you'd get a load of traction off those nostalgia social media pages.

How were they able to get this data? I’ve had lots of similar idea bur no idea on how I can get all data on restaurants in my city.

Really good idea

It would be nice if people could add restaurants, I guess you are worried that that would require too much moderation?

"Really good idea" - this reminds me of the south park episode where when the parents list to the children's music they hear poop sounds on top of the track and Randy says he really likes it.

No for sure, that’s a very necessary feature. I’ll be adding it today.

For now, you can email info@restaurants.rip

Thanks a lot!

nice.

Can you add entries for some really famous places, e.g. Kiev in NYC

https://www.google.com/search?q=famous+nyc+restaurants+that+...

RIP East Coast Grill & Border Cafe.

Suburban versions of restaurants in town are never really the same, but you might enjoy the Border Cafe in Burlington more than you expect.

I haven't found anything like the East Coast Grill, though.

Border Cafe was cheap, good and fun - perfect for a broke college student. I remember the two hour plus wait lists for tables way, way, back in the day. Friends and I would go to the book and record stores while waiting. It was a great way to spend an evening.

East Coast Grill is irreplaceable. Schlesinger's inventive mix of tropical flavors and and bold style made that restaurant a special treat at every visit. Whereas others would drag their parents to Henrietta's Table or the like, I directed all outside buyers of meals for me to ECG. I learned I loved fried plantains and anything marinaded in molasses&lime.

The Martini from Hell was undrinkable.

If you don't have Schlesinger's cookbooks, I would recommend them - they are excellent and straightforward to follow.

RIP Sasso, Zürich Wollishofen (Switzerland)

RIP Zur Rote Buech (A.K.A Schnitzi), Zürich Wollishofen (Switzerland)

Even after 3 years, I'm still sad about Clarke's Charcoal Broiler in Mountain View.

seems to have lots of posts like this: https://restaurants.rip/r/curry-house-hawthorne-blvd-torranc...

lol'd at someone's attempt to put an xss on one of the restaurants

It would be interesting if you could list what the restaurant was replaced by.

Cool website. Reminds me a lot of the early golden years of the internet

Ah, to eat at Dottie’s in SF again, on Market. Absolute best breakfast.

Another, too, for Pluto’s. Those restaurants were the best!

Ain’t there no more.

Like a New Orleans section would say.

Lol @ Big Bite Pizza & Grill TX

I thought Foursquare already provided this service /s

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