Steve’s Restaurant Closes on Swarthmore, after Oak Room

High food prices, strange service and an inconsistent theme helped contribute to the sudden closure of Steve’s Restaurant on Swarthmore last week.
Named after owner Steve Taub, this was the third eatery attempting to establish itself in the former Mort’s Deli and Oak Room location.
First came Richard Riordan’s restaurant/bar The Village Pantry and Oak Room in 2008, followed by Lenny’s Deli in 2011, and then Steve’s in early 2012, after Taub bought out his former business partner, Lenny Rosenberg.
When owned by Taub, a former Porsche dealer in Santa Monica, the restaurant went through several name changes (i.e., Steve’s Kitchen and Steve’s Deli), and the menu veered away from deli food.
The Oak Room, an adjoining bar connected to the restaurant, closed its doors in late January. At that time, Taub told friends that he didn’t like the idea of running a bar. He told the Palisadian-Post he would keep the bar area open for special events, but that he would reinvent the restaurant to focus on “four-star cuisine.”
He had previously announced that the eatery would serve “fresh foods from the farmers market” and would continue tableside liquor service.
Last week’s closure came as a surprise to Steve’s employees, who showed up to work on Tuesday (May 7) but found the restaurant locked and several handwritten “closed” signs taped to the front windows. Some employees had their paychecks bounce before being reimbursed by the owner, sources told the Post.
A day later, standing behind the counter of the now closed eatery and wearing his signature white sleeveless exercise shirt, Taub refused to come to the front door to talk about the closure. He gave this reporter a thumbs’ down and waved no when asked to comment.
Over the past week, he has not returned phone calls.
Various patrons blamed the restaurant’s decline on several varying factors, starting with its bright blue and white façade that some critics likened to a circus-themed Greek ice cream shop.
“I’m hoping that Steve’s, formerly Lenny’s, formerly Mort’s, will do something about the ugly colors of its building on Swarthmore,” a caller on the Post’s Two Cents hotline. “It truly is a blight on the neighborhood.”
Other residents complained about lapses in customer service.
For example, one businessman said he and several friends were having dinner in the Oak Room when a food server came to their table and offered them cookies with no mention of a price or that they were for sale.
“I thought my cookie was free, but then we were handed a bill charging us $5 for each of the cookies,” said the customer.
Another patron told the Post about the “half-price slice of cake” special.
“I was eating with a friend when the waitress offered me a half-price slice of cake. So, I ordered it to go. When I went to pick up the dessert, I saw the waitress cutting a slice of cake in half.”
Apparently, this special was “half a slice of cake for half the price,” said the customer, who laughed about this strange sales tactic.
Oak Room patrons told the Post that they were confused about the bar’s lack of a consistent theme.
“It was supposed to be a sports bar, but when we went in there to watch a game, they turned down the television after a customer complained,” one customer said.
While the restaurant failed to attract a large patronage, Taub was generous in offering the Oak Room as a venue for several nonprofit fundraising events, such as a concert by the Palisades High Music Matters club and a coffeehouse event to benefit anti-bullying efforts.
Rosenberg, who was initially successful in the Mort’s location, told the Post in March that he “didn’t fully intend on moving Lenny’s” but that he appreciates his new location in Westwood, where he has restored another landmark location: the historic Junior’s Deli.
One of the driving forces behind forming a Business Improvement District in the Palisades, Rosenberg said that sales “were fine” at the Palisades location but that the foot traffic could have been better. The Village area didn’t have a marketing program to drive traffic to local businesses, and there was no push to get the public there, he added.
The closure of Steve’s Restaurant and the Oak Room adds nearly 80 feet of empty storefront space on Swarthmore, a block already suffering from years of empty spaces from previous closures (The Prince’s Table, Village Books, ã la Tarte, Roy Robbins and Lily James).
Katie Kalvin, a 30-year Palisades resident who works on Swarthmore, said the sight of another empty storefront on the street disheartens her.
“When it was Mort’s it was really busy and family-oriented,” Kalvin said. “Now look: multi-million-dollar homes and this is our shopping area—this is just sad, so sad.”