The Spotted Pig

Our old review said the Spotted Pig, a simply appointed British gastropub, served bar food good enough to put many neighboring restaurants to shame. Michelin had already agreed: the Pig won a star in 2005 and held it until 2016¹. Ken Friedman and chef April Bloomfield opened it in the West Village in 2004, after Bloomfield, a British expatriate, flew to New York to interview with Friedman and Mario Batali^{1, 2}. Batali and Jay-Z were investors, and frequent visitors².

In December 2017 The New York Times published an article in which Friedman was accused of multiple cases of sexual harassment². On January 7, 2020, he agreed to pay $240,000 and 20% of his profits to former employees who had accused him of sexual harassment and discrimination².

The Spotted Pig closed on January 26, 2020². Its owners said the Pig had been running in the red for a long time, and that they had been unable to raise funds or sell the business to pay the rent and other debts¹.

The building sat empty and in disrepair until Matt Abramcyk and his partners bought it, and he spent more than a year restoring it^{3, 4}. In May 2023 he opened the Golden Swan there with chef Doug Brixton, serving French and Mediterranean-influenced menus^{5, 6}. The name honors an old Greenwich Village tavern frequented by poets, artists and authors, opened at the turn of the 19th century by the barman Thomas Wallace, for whom the downstairs is named⁴.