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Spice, the Thai restaurant that held down the corner of First Avenue and East 77th Street for years, has closed.
An employee at Spice’s Upper West Side location confirmed the closure to East Side Feed but was unable to say why the restaurant at 1479 First Avenue shut its doors. Both locations are still listed on spicethaiusa.com.
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The restaurant traded on the name of a chain that, by its own account, began in Manhattan in 1997 and once stretched across the city, marketing itself as the winner of New York’s best Thai restaurant honors. On the Upper East Side, it built a following on lunch specials, cocktails, and a menu heavy on the greatest hits — pad Thai, drunk man noodles, three flavor salmon, chu chee duck and crispy whole fish.Reviews across the years were split, and Spice’s own management often replied to them. On Tripadvisor, one visitor called it essential Thai food on the Upper East Side and singled out the teriyaki salmon; another wrote it off as unremarkable food from a small local chain. Diners on Foursquare leaned on the same shorthand for years: the lunch special was the deal, and the basics rarely missed.
The closure continues a long contraction for the Spice name. In June 2024, the Thai restaurant at 975 Amsterdam Avenue and West 108th Street shut down abruptly after more than a decade, with a sign on the door citing a “difficult decision to close” and offering no reason — a story covered by our sister site, I Love the Upper West Side. At the time, an employee at the Spice on Amsterdam Avenue and West 81st Street told ILTUWS that location had become an entirely separate business under a new owner.
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Today, a second Spice-branded website lists locations in Williamsburg, Long Island City, Park Slope, and on East 13th Street near Union Square, though Yelp lists the Union Square restaurant as closed. An earlier Spice on Second Avenue in Lenox Hill is also gone.What comes next for the First Avenue corner is not yet clear.
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