Pizza at Burch Steakhouse and Pizza Bar
Burch
Last weekend one of my Stephanies sent me a text saying: Too bad we can't spend Valentine's in the Burch basement. It had become a tradition, posting up at the pizza bar, eating all the pizzas, and sending glasses of bubbles to the moms at tables with kids. It was effortlessly cool, you didn't have to work too hard to have a truly fabulous night there. But not this year. Not ever again.
After months of closure, and millions of messages from concerned eaters, Isaac Becker and Nancy St. Pierre confirmed that they would not be bringing Burch Steak & Pizza back. In a note to employees, a snap of which was forwarded to me, they stated the following:
When Burch opened in 2013, I really thought he and his team had redefined the steak house. Dumplings? Choose-your-own-adventure sized steaks, including wagyu and 50-day aged? Where were the pictures of cows? And: pizza bar in the basement?! Hell yeah. They lit up Lowry Hill through glass walls barely holding in the revelry. The brunches I had, the late-night stops at the bar for last call, the riotus memories built there, that taste of that goddamned sea bean salad, will never go away. Man, it was loud.
But when March shuttered everyone, and everyone began shuffling and pivoting, Burch remained dark. No takeout pizzas, no tee-shirt sales, just quiet. In fact all the Becker-St. Pierre properties went dark and stayed dark: Bar La Grassa, 112 Eatery, and the recently opened Snack Bar. The belief was that everyone was keeping safe and healthy until all could return to normal.
After a while, the industry rumor mill started churning with whispers of lawsuits and buyouts, that there was something else keeping them closed. We looked, but nothing like that has surfaced, and the fact remains: the pandemic is dark and nefarious enough without all that.
The Burch website was taken down this week, and the name removed from the other sites as a sister restaurant. I had started sending messages around to see if there was news, and then there was. No word yet from the team on what will happen to the other restaurants, but we can all hope that we don't lose any more of the Becker-St. Pierre restaurants.
