Owner Says Bubby's Is Mending Its Ways

By Carl Glassman
POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2007

It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the sidewalk in front of Bubby’s was oddly absent of its usual spillover crowd. Every few minutes some would-be brunchers arrived, squinted at the bright yellow “CLOSED” notice that the city’s Department of Health had stuck onto the door, and pondered their next move.

“This sucks,” said Caroline Prince, who had come from Union Square. “I wanted my huevos rancheros and I’m really hungry. Now I don’t know where to eat around here.”

Inside, owner Ron Silver, 45, sat at the bar, sipping a cup of coffee and explaining to a Tribeca Trib reporter what his Health Department problems—much publicized in the press and restaurant blogs—would mean for business.

Only good things, he claimed.

“Those yellow stickers are a blessing,” Silver said, motioning to the door where yet another disappointed diner was peering through the glass. “I would never have closed down on brunch, no way. So this place is really getting the most thorough going over, way beyond anything I had to do.”

Indeed, downstairs, in the bakery and prep kitchen, workers mopped, and mopped again. New stainless steel panels glistened on the walls and it was the smell of fresh paint, not pies, that hung in the air. Potential vermin portals in the walls and ceilings had been sealed. By the following Wednesday, the week of its 17th anniversary, Bubby’s would be back in business.

The Health Department inspected Bubby’s six times this year (“The guys have been attacking and attacking and attacking,” according to Silver), failing it five times for alleged violations that included, among other things, “food contaminated with over 200 live cockroaches,” evidence of rats, fly infestation, and food kept at unsafe temperatures.

The violations that closed him down were fixed within a couple of hours, Silver noted.

“It wasn’t like we were rat and roach infested,” he said. “I feed 5,000 people a week here. Obviously, not everyone's looking at Poltergeist-like flies on the wall.”

Silver said he has cured the violations after each inspection. He disputed some of the Health Department’s findings and acknowledged others, but insisted that he was already on a path towards turning his popular restaurant around when the city shut him down.

“In 1990 I had not a pot to piss in and I was willing to work my ass off,” Silver said. “Today I have a thriving business in a changed environment and I just plan on running it like a real tight business.”

Reciting some of those changes, Silver mentioned requiring every employee to hold a food handlers permit and upgrading what he described as “flaky” service. (“My waiters would take their time to take orders, give each other back rubs and talk about their new tattoos. We were all like that.”) He also filled several dumpsters with “records and junk” of 17 years, he said.

And then there is the matter of flashlights. Each employee will get one, with his or her designated zone to inspect each day, twice a day. “Everybody’s responsible for every f---king thing,” he proclaimed.

Grabbing a flashlight of his own, he led the visitor to the restaurant’s coffee station, an alcove near the bar. It all looked clean and in order until he aimed the beam at a portion of the wall, nearly hidden behind the shelves, that was darkened with water and coffee stains. “Nobody has reason to look down there, but look what you see.”

That quiet Sunday morning, Silver professed experiencing the same enthusiasm for reopening Bubby’s that he felt 17 years ago, on the eve of his first day in business.

“I’m excited to be a team and a real restaurant,” he said. “And, quite honestly, to grow up myself.”

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