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Closed for Business: PSbklyn, 833 Union Street
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 9:08PM 
Eleven months after its much-ballyhooed Grand Opening on Union Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, it appears as if family-friendly gastropub PSbklyn has closed its doors for good. It hasn't been open for nearly a week, the phone number has been disconnected, and emails sent to the owners were met with no response.
With a bar in the front, DVD players in the booths in the back, and a game room in the basement, the cavernous restaurant was the source of some friction due to its split focus: gastropub or upscale Chuck E. Cheese? Owners Steve Sohmer and Tom Graziano put lots of care into the design and menu, but the place just never really clicked. It sat nearly empty most nights, and while it did satisfy parents in need of a restaurant where their kids could be entertained, it never really caught on with other types of people, namely the coveted bar crowd (and those without children in tow).
Opening night bar crowd
Most Yelp reviewers agreed that aside from the kid-centricity, it was too expensive, had spotty service, and was disorganized, and while the pizza and burgers were generally well-liked, those weren't enough to keep it afloat and attract many repeat customers. You have to give them credit for a novel concept, but it simply failed in execution.
There was some controversy back in March when an apparent listing for the restaurant showed up on a seller's website. The owners denied it vehemently and claimed sabotage, but apparently rumors of distress weren't unfounded. They also went through several chefs in the short amount of time they were open, leading to inconsistency.
Perch Cafe, Aunt Suzie's, Comida, and Kappa Sake House also closed within only the past week, which has to be some sort of record. This is a huge (and expensive) space, so I'll be very interested in seeing who the next tenant is.
Closed for Business in Food, Scoops, Storefronts
Reader Comments (17)
I never stopped in, but being someone without kids as never tempted to. Also, that name was just a bad idea from the start. How was it even intended to be pronounced? PS?
That looks like one messy pizza.
My impression, when you "much-ballyhooed" its opening, was that this was a liability suit waiting to happen: while mom and dad down their designer martinis upstairs, son or daughter is downstairs, unsupervised, getting slammed on the head by an older kid whose parents neglected to give him his afternoon adderall dose.
It's really bad business to cater just to people with kids. Even in kid friendly Park Slope, the population of people with kids is 24%. That leaves 3/4ths of the neighborhood without children and would have had zero interest in this restaurant/children's playpen.
Open a nice restaurant like Al Di La there and watch the crowds roll in from all over the city. It's a no brainer in such a great space. I think Batali needs to get on this one. Or those guys from Thistle Hill Tavern. Make it a BBQ place. A nice one like Fette Sau or Fatty Cue.
Place is garbage.... food is aweful and very expensive
Wow, I'm completely shocked...
I'm a parent and I hated this place. The food was mediocre, the service lackluster and I hate the concept.
What is truly sad and pathetic is that every single person said this was going to fail when it was first announced. Take a look and almost all people on every blog who posted about this said it would close in a year or less.
Stupid owners for thinking they know better than the people for whom they were serving. Goes to show that small business owners would be wise to check these silly old blogs once in a while and get a sense of what the actual people in the community want and don't want.
@bk4life: While you're point is generally pretty good, calling the owners "stupid" is a bit misguided. One would hope they had a business plan, did some due diligence and spent some time in the community. Seeing the number of strollers (hey, why didn't they have a kennel for dogs, too?), and seeing that aside from the pizza joints and Two Boots, the neighborhood lacked a kid-friendly place parents could eat at, they must have thought they had the formula.
I just wonder how so many potential restaurant owners are able to finance their follies. I mean, isn't the failure rate of restaurants higher than the failure rate of marriages these days? What would you do if you were a banker and were asked for $250K-$500K to open a new restaurant in a neighborhood as saturated with restaurants like PS?
Park Slope may be saturated with restaurants but it isn't saturated with GOOD restaurants. The West Village has tons of great restaurants, even Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg have better restaurants. I see a lot of crap closing up and am not sad to see places like Aunt Suzie's, PSBrooklyn and Comida go. With any luck, something better will come and replace these empty storefronts. And by better, I don't mean more expensive or more upscale I just mean better quality and better suited to the neighborhood residents. The current ones, not some idealized version of what Park Slope was in 1975. NYC is constantly changing. It's time folks realized the current demographics of the neighborhood and opened businesses accordingly.
I ate there once, early on a weekend evening. It was a complete ghost town. Tables which hadn't been sat at for hours, not bussed at all, while staff just sat around and did nothing. $18 for a mediocre burger, which is the same amount charged for April Bloomfield's burger at the Ace Hotel Lobby, probably the best burger I ever had. I wouldn't have brought my kid there. I wouldn't have brought my worst enemy there. A sham of a restaurant that should have closed ages ago.
An actual good restaurant, Bussaco, which couldn't catch a break, stood there before. I wish it'd come back.
I'll say it again: that pizza looks disgusting.
@ps: Thanks. Another argument for blog moderators to review and accept comments before posting them. Between your insightful response to my comment and the cheap fashion necklace comment, above, we're really moving in a very positive direction. Soon, we can combine heresparkslope, fuckedinparkslope and onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn into one hate-filled, spam-filled blog.
They're relentless. How much could such efforts be worth in terms of advertising? Silly.
I'll agree on that pizza. They clearly didn't have an oven hot enough to produce decent pizza. There's no char, cheese isn't melted through, looks way underdone. If the burgers weren't worth the money, as stated above, they clearly didn't have the combination of quality and value to survive.
The problem is the kids could not drink booze or smoke at the bar. Always kept me and junior away.
For what it's worth, their gate was up last night, and it appeared as though their pizza oven was on. No one was in the restaurant though and it was unclear if they were open or just cleaning up. It's the first time in two weeks this spot has shown any signs of life. What a strange story this is shaping up to be.
There were many problems with this place but the main one was the owners high turn over rates tells me the owner is screwing up, I went into this place a few times. I always sat at the bar but you constantly had children around lots of them even the bartenders seemed frustrated about it which is really a sad thing
i went once, just after the first chef was fired, and it was like I was interrupting something....
They couldn't take credit cards, and had trouble changing a $100 bill.... Clear signals of stress.
It sounds to me like someone got suckered into financing someone elses "vision".