Café Edison In Time Square Will Close After 34 Years

Café Edison, the Times Square coffee shop "that doubled as a downscale dining club for producers, stage managers, actors, ticket-takers, stagehands, musicians, and countless other creatures of old Broadway" will close at the end of the year, its manager told The New York Times.

The unassuming café spent its life as both a standard place of congregation for Times Square tourists, and as an important show business staple, where "more deals were done... than in the haute Russian Tea Room," a theater executive reportedly once declared.

Mimi Sheraton, The New York Times' own former restaurant critic, told the  paper that she "thought the soups were very great," and included a mention in her upcoming book, 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die.

In its place, "a white-tablecloth restaurant with a 'name chef'" will take over putting the entire café staff out of work. In a statement, the Edison Hotel's general manager confirmed that the café "is closing as the hotel prepares for a multimillion-dollar investment to upgrade and restore the space."

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Karen Lo is an associate editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @appleplexy.