Double Zero closes after 12 years in the East Village

Double Zero, the plant-based pizza and wine bar at 65 Second Avenue in the East Village, has closed after 12 years, according to EV Grieve.

The reasons given are rent, operating costs and a slowdown in plant-based dining. Hoodline reported that occupancy costs at the address had tripled since the restaurant opened, which is the sentence that explains most New York closures without needing a trend attached to it.

The last four months make the case sharper. In 2025 the room merged with its neighbouring sister restaurant Bar Verde to form PlantMade, a combined vegan pizza and Mexican operation, explicitly to relieve financial pressure. In May 2026 Matthew Kenney rejoined and Double Zero reopened in the storefront next door under its own name. It lasted the summer.

Plant-based dining is not disappearing. The rooms built for its growth curve are.

Why Double Zero closed anyway

Because none of those moves touched the fixed costs. Merging two concepts halves the kitchen but not the lease. Reopening under a stronger name restores the search traffic but not the margin. A pizza and wine format runs on volume, and volume is what a shrinking category stops delivering.

That is the part worth separating from the obituary. Plant-based dining is not disappearing; the restaurants built when it was a growth market are. The category was capitalised on the assumption that demand would keep climbing, and the rooms sized accordingly.

A thinner map in Manhattan

Double Zero is the second long-running vegan address in the borough to go this year. Red Bamboo, a 24-year-old Greenwich Village fixture, closed on West 4th Street in February, citing post-pandemic revenue losses, high rent and rising operating expenses. Two closures do not make a collapse, but they do remove the two places most likely to be recommended first.

The pattern is not local. In Britain, the licensed estate is closing twenty sites a day and opening almost as many. New York does the same arithmetic with higher rents and less warning.