Café Gitane Is Back in Chinatown With New Partners and Its First Cocktail List. The Restaurant Business Questions Behind the Comeback
The French-Moroccan downtown favorite reopened at 162 East Broadway with 33 seats, walk-in seating and a full liquor program for the first time. Its return comes with partners, a smaller footprint and reports about its past finances that any restaurateur should read.
NEW YORK — Café Gitane, the French-Moroccan café that served avocado toast to downtown before it was a cliché, is open again. This time it is at 162 East Broadway in Chinatown, with a new partnership structure and, for the first time, a full bar.
What Reopened
Founder Luc Lévy opened the original on Mott Street in 1994, Time Out reported. He is now joined by restaurateur Nima Garos and Norman Reedus, the actor and a longtime customer, who is a partner. The new room is 1,200 square feet with 33 seats, seven of them at the bar. The map of Morocco, the Jimi Hendrix image and the servers’ little green dresses made the move, and kitchen staff who have worked with Lévy for 15 years returned.
The menu keeps the classics: avocado toast on seven-grain bread, Moroccan couscous, the spicy beef meatball tagine and hachis Parmentier. New dishes include lamb ragu linguini, skirt steak and an $18 burger. Cocktails are new to Gitane, including the Sheltering Sky, made with vodka, Aperol and Moroccan spices, according to Time Out. Resident reports the café is walk-in only and closed Mondays. Daily Front Row lists hours of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for lunch and 5 p.m. to late for dinner, with weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Infatuation, in a short listing, notes the spot sits where the original JaJaJa used to be and says its team had not yet visited.
A Partnership Built for the Business Side
Hoodline, summarizing reporting by InsideHook, says Garos, who co-founded the plant-based Mexican chain JaJaJa and the Little Italy pasta restaurant Gelso & Grand, handles finances and day-to-day operations while Lévy keeps creative control. The report says the café now runs a takeout window and a full bar and has 12 employees, about five of them returning, after a five-week preparation window.
The bar is the largest business change. Hoodline’s account, citing Garos, says the Mott Street original had no liquor license at all. Adding cocktails gives a small café an evening revenue line it never had, though it brings its own licensing and staffing demands.
The Backstory Owners Should Read
The comeback is not without questions, and a responsible account includes them. The café closed abruptly in late 2025. Hoodline reports that in 2025 Grub Street published allegations from current and former employees about missing paychecks and back wages, and that InsideHook later quoted a former waitress and a former head chef describing unpaid wages and bounced checks. Those are allegations from the cited outlets and individuals; we have not independently verified them.
The same report says court records reviewed by Grub Street show years of landlord and supplier judgments and state tax warrants, and that Garos told InsideHook rent at Mott Street had grown from about $1,500 a month in the 1990s to roughly $27,000 by the time it closed. According to Hoodline, Lévy and Garos both told InsideHook that Lévy should have closed the café a year earlier, and Lévy did not respond to InsideHook’s request for comment by publication. We did not receive a comment from the restaurant for this article.
Lessons for New York Restaurant Owners
A smaller room can be a safer room. Going from a long-running Nolita space whose rent reportedly reached $27,000 a month to a 33-seat café is a reminder that fixed costs decide how long a beloved restaurant lasts.
Nostalgia does not pay the payroll. A famous name draws the first rush. Paying staff and vendors on time is what keeps a restaurant open, and New York workers have legal protections for wages owed.
Separate the creative from the financial. The reported split, with Garos on finances and Lévy on creative, is a common structure for founder-led restaurants. It works only if the books are transparent.
Plan the bar early. A full liquor program changes hours, staffing and margins. Check State Liquor Authority requirements before building it into your concept.
Whether Gitane’s second act sticks will be decided by regulars, new neighbors on East Broadway and how it treats the people on its payroll. For now, it is open Tuesday through Sunday, and there is no reservation list to join.
Entrepreneurs Of New York is an independent publication and is not affiliated with Café Gitane.