photos courtesy of Christian Svanes Kolding
Tekoá, the small Cobble Hill café, owned by husband and wife team Alex Raij and Eder Montero of La Vara, the eatery next door, has just closed. According to a note in the window of 264 Clinton Street, coffee (and a limited breakfast menu) were not enough to sustain the business after buying the lease and paying rent.
So Raij and Montero are re-imagining the space into The Pilar, a "corner fisherie" with wine and cocktails.
The closing was reported to PMFA by Christian Svanes Kolding, who writes:
We walked to Tekoá this morning, as we do every Monday morning, and saw that it was closed. The little café on Clinton Street with the same ownership as La Vara had yesterday as its last day. That’s too bad.
The argument the owners make that a coffee shop can’t thrive in this neighborhood seems a bit circumspect. Even though Café Pedlar around the corner has also closed (and I have no idea when anything will re-emerge in that space) it’s seems to me that Tekoá suffered more from a lack of vision and resources than a lack of demand.
Every time we were there, or I happened to be walking by in the morning, there was a line of customers out the front door – so clearly, they had a base.
Yet outside the morning hours, I couldn’t see the attraction that would give customers a compelling reason to return. Whenever I was there, they were routinely short-staffed, especially during the morning rush, with a limited menu – though the food was always nice – while the seating was unnecessarily crowded. So what’s the appeal of going there during lunch, for example, when you knew that most of your time would be spent either waiting in line or waiting for them to fulfill the order?
I’m guessing that many customers came there because there weren’t other good options nearby, especially for a sit-down coffee, so they’d put up with the inconveniences of the slow service.
I wrote to the owners, asking them to provide more staff for their morning shifts but they never responded and I never saw any improvement, nor did I ever see evidence that they understood what their customers wanted (or perhaps they simply didn’t want to provide what their customers wanted).
Let’s hope that the new venture, which focuses on seafood and fish, is a success.
I’d be curious to see what they’re going to offer but I will miss having Tekoá as a coffee option. We don’t have enough cafés in the neighborhood where one can sit and talk with friends, as we’re pretty much down to East One now, while a handful of other spots put most of their energy into serving take-away drinks."
One would think that this particular location next to Cobble Hill Park is quite desirable. Adding a full liquor license to a great little fish place could be quite successful here. What do you think?
*For those keeping track, 264 Clinton Street was the home of Ted and Honey until 2015.
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