Adios to ‘Moo Shu Mex': Chelsea Standby Closes

The Bright Food Shop, a restaurant serving Mexican-Asian cuisine, served its last meal Wednesday night. Longtime customers and staff of the Chelsea fixture were in tears, an owner, Dona Abraham, said of the restaurant at the corner of 21st Street and Eighth Avenue. Her two-doors-north companion take-out store, Kitchen/Market, a cross between a California-style burrito shop and a Mexican grocery store, will close Sunday. Customers told her there would be "a hole in their lives," Ms. Abraham said.

Singer Debbie Harry has been a customer; actor Ethan Hawke was known to eat breakfast there. Actress Sandra Bernhardt was sad about the closing when she stopped in yesterday morning, Ms Abraham said.

Rent was the key reason for closing the stores, Ms. Abraham's husband and co-owner, Stuart Tarabour, said. Kitchen/Market opened in 1985, and the Bright Food Shop followed in 1990. A large white poster in the window tells passersby: "When we renewed our lease in 1999, we gambled that we could increase our business enough to make ‘the numbers' work."

Patrons will miss the restaurant's popular "Moo Shu Mex," a hand-rolled tortilla filled with shredded Chinese vegetables and chipotle peanut sauce, which can be eaten at the bar under an original tin ceiling.

The restaurant reviewer at The New York Sun, Paul Adams, said Bright Foods was one of his favorite places. He said he did not know any better pancakes in the city than their cornmeal-pecan griddlecakes. He also said it was the first place in the city he was served Japan's Hitachino Nest Beer.

"This is the place to get a burrito," a dancer who has been a longtime customer, Blake Pearson, said, adding that he was really upset to hear it was closing. Mr. Pearson also liked their bread pudding.

Ms. Abraham said the chicken-cheese burrito (with a mixture of Jack, Cheddar, and Cotija cheese) was probably the most popular item on the menu at Kitchen/Market. "We believe we've served about a million burritos," she said.

The take-out store is a sliver filled with wicker boxes of jalapenos and sun-dried tomatoes. Piñatas sit atop shelves crowded with books and other Mexican items. Further back, there are bins with salsas, chile, pickled chiles, pozoles, corn meals, green sauces, Mexican hot sauces, and one marked "Habanero XXX Hot."

The poster outside the Bright Food Shop listed some advantages of owning the restaurant, including never in 17 years having to buy hats, gloves, scarves or umbrellas. The owners are saving the neon sign and porcelain enamel panels, which they believe date to the 1930s.

"I'll miss feeding our wonderful customers," Ms. Abraham said. She said the hardest part was putting the key in the door to close at 11 p.m. A number of the staff are longtime employees. Prior to the closing, the owners called a number of their regular customers to inform them that Wednesday would the last night.

But all is not lost. Ms. Abraham hopes to start a small burrito operation inside another store not far away.