Ted Gordon, the co-owner of the Second Street Cafe, told Dana Rubinstein at the Brooklyn Paper, that you can’t run a restaurant on lunches and brunches alone.

The cafe never seemed very crowded at dinner time. I went there few times over the years but it wasn’t my first choice for dinner.

Maybe that’s because I always thought of Second Street as a great place for coffee, breakfast, and lunch. Truly, they did do a great job with lunch (their goat cheese salad was one of my faves) It was one of my favorite Seventh Avenue place to meet friends and family for the mid-day meal. I never considered going there for Sunday brunch because it was always so crowded and a wait was almost certain.

Gordon told the Brooklyn Paper that business fell off a few years ago. I wonder if he’s just talking about the dinner business because I didn’t notice a change in the popularity of their lunch and brunch. Apparently, the renovation was part of an effort to improve business. Sadly, that effort failed or didn’t reap any benefits.

Maybe it was removing the customer drawings from the walls and ceilings; moving the front door from Seventh Avenue to 2nd Street could have been part of it. I was in there for lunch recently and the food seemed the same as ever. Sweet Melissa’s may have cut into their breakfast and lunch crowd, as well.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the landlord raised the rent to $12,000, which was just one more reason for their demise.