Brooklyn Life

Sante Fe Grill in Park Slope Closes After 34 Years in Business

The owner of the restaurant posted a note on the front door explaining why it was time to turn off the lights after more than three decades.

by Craig Hubert

10/08/2018 3 minute 0

A Park Slope staple recently closed its doors.

Santa Fe Grill, located at 62 7th Avenue at the corner of Lincoln Place, shuttered on Wednesday, September 26 after 34 years. The owner, Joseph T. McFeely, posted a note on the front door explaining why it was time to turn off the lights.

“The restaurant business has never been an easy path, but just as I want life to become a little less demanding, the demands of this business are increasing dramatically,” he wrote in the letter. “It’s time.”

Read the entire letter below.

Dear Friends,

Sante Fe Grill, my family and I have spent 34 years with you on the corner of 7th Avenue and Lincoln Place — a lifetime. We have grown up, raised families and grown old together. So many wonderful years — and it has been a privilege to be part of your lives, and you mine, for such a long time. I have seen so many of you make major life changes over the decades and now, after 34 years, it’s my turn. I am closing Santa Fe Grill on September 26, 2018.

August 2019 would have marked my 39th year in the restaurant business in Park Slope, starting on Union Street in the summer of 1980 at J.T. McFeely’s Victorian Saloon. The restaurant business has never been an easy path, but just as I want life to become a little less demanding, the demands of this business are increasing dramatically. It’s time.

I must mention that a restaurant owes most of its success to its staff, and mine has been extraordinary with some employees still with me since the beginning … I can’t thank them enough!

From the bottom of my heart, I thank all of you for supporting Santa Fe — for all the great nights at the bar when the banter was especially lively, for all the New Year’s Eve parties and Halloween celebrations, for birthdays and promotions, first dates and proposals, for sharing the pain of financial crises, the horror of 9/11, and for every other meaningful occasion or regular night you chose to come here. I will treasure all the memories.

Joseph T. McFeely