Mexican Restaurant To Replace French Roast In Greenwich Village

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — The Mexican restaurant La Contenta will replace French Roast, the legendary Greenwich Village restaurant that shuttered unexpectedly earlier this year.

La Contenta will soon open a location at 78 W. 11th St., according to a notice on its website. The restaurant's first location opened in the Lower East Side at 102 Norfolk St. in 2015. La Contenta promises "Mexican cuisine with French accents" from Chef Luis Arce Mota, according to its website.

French Roast first opened in the Village in 1993. The hybrid cafe-diner-restaurant-bar remained open 24 hours a day for years, before briefly pausing its 24-service in 2015. The restaurant became a Village standby, counting locals, students, celebrities and more as part of its dedicated crowd of regulars. French Roast said it was closing its Village location in July, but did not release details on the decision to close. A location on the Upper West Side remains open.

Longtime restaurants and shops in the Village, and throughout Manhattan, have been forced to shutter in recent years thanks to spiraling real estate costs in the neighborhood.

Lead image: Ciara McCarthy / Patch