Mermaid Inn owners ‘super sad’ to close Upper West Side location after 15 years

The Mermaid Inn, a perpetually popular eatery at 570 Amsterdam Ave. for 15 years, will close on Oct. 16. Owners Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith said that they mutually agreed with the building’s new owners, a local partnership, to terminate their lease on the New England-style seafood spot which was soon to expire.

“We’re both super sad,” Smith said of her and Abrams’ feelings after they broke the news to 90 employees.

Their new landlord has unknown plans for the building and, “We didn’t want to have a restaurant surrounded by a scaffold,” Smith said.

But Mermaid-lovers can look forward too to a new location nearby, Abrams said.

“We’re looking at two or three spots to move on the Upper West Side, and we hope to be in one by late spring or early summer,” he said.

Meanwhile, the duo are close to opening a mammoth new Mermaid Inn at 127 W. 43rd Street off Times Square, the former HB Burger site, where they’ve teamed up with Alicart Restaurant Group CEO Jeffrey Bank.

Abrams and Smith said Amsterdam Avenue employees will be offered jobs at the Times Square venue. Only about half of the planned 550 seats will open this fall, with the rest to follow early next year.

“We haven’t built it out yet,” Abrams explained.

It will be their fifth and largest Mermaid. The oldest, at 96 Second Ave. downtown, just reopened after the two-year pandemic. The others are in Greenwich Village (where it’s called the Mermaid Oyster Bar) and Chelsea.