Argo, the charming Mediterranean restaurant on Duane Park that opened in October 2023, seems to have closed. Their website is no longer active, and the phone number is disconnected. S. first wrote to say her New Year’s reservation had been cancelled, though she had ordered takeout as recently as December. The restaurant still looks set up inside, but H. said the hanging sign had just recently been taken down. UPDATE: The bartender at The Hideaway confirmed that they closed at Christmas.

This is a loss. They seemed to be part of the neighborhood — and even chipped in at Taste of Tribeca.

They had a rough start through no fault of their own — a situation that is no unheard of around here. They were approved for a liquor license in March, which means, in my mind, they were paying rent starting then. But as of opening, still did not have their license due to a bad lawyer and then a clogged up SLA. They may have also been paying for the crimes of the former restaurant owner in that space, which ran the failed Gato Nero and Serenata, which sold liquor without a license for months.

This was the former Max space; Max, of course, spent more than a decade there (after another decade in Alphabet City) but moved to West Broadway in 2019 after suffering through a prolonged period without gas. Of course I have my theory on what is a totally inhospitable restaurant climate in this city: if the chef is not one of the owners, it’s tough to survive on a smaller scale. It’s just not efficient enough, financially.