Bar Fight

Community battles raucous restaurant over noise and dancing

By Megan Finnegan Bungeroth

The Upper West Side outpost of Papasito Grill and Agave Bar is ostensibly a Mexican restaurant like any other. They serve traditional fare like quesadillas and guacamole, as well as food with a “gourmet twist,” as their website boasts, and pride themselves on their specialty cocktails and 150 tequila offerings. But according to the restaurant’s neighbors, Papasito is anything but a typical restaurant.

“I have no problems with restaurants. There has been a restaurant there before, but this place does not operate as a restaurant from 12 to 4 a.m.,” said Sarah Orleans, whose apartment is right above the establishment at 2728 Broadway. “Most restaurants don’t promote free tequila shots and DJs until 4 a.m.”

Orleans and more than 10 other residents came out to last week’s Community Board 7 meeting to protest the restaurant’s application for a liquor license, which the board was reviewing. She said that the noise and raucousness emanating from Papasito’s on a nightly basis forces her to sleep at friends’ apartments on weekends, the only time she can get some decent shut-eye.

Others had similarly heated complaints about Papasito, saying that they had moved to the area for its relative peacefulness and family-friendly apartments and were now bombarded with booming music, drunken patrons, whom several people noted will exit Papasito yelling in the middle of the night, and even violence. The owners have acknowledged the need to frisk guests for weapons before entering, a move they tout as being responsible and cautious but that others decry as another reason the establishment doesn’t belong in a residential neighborhood.

The Upper West Side incarnation of Papasito is the second after the original location in Inwood, at 223 Dykman St. That spot along with other bars along what residents have taken to calling “Alcohol Alley” on Dykman Street has inspired similar complaints from the community, and the State Liquor Authority has opened a proceeding to potentially cancel or revoke Papasito’s liquor license at that location for giving alcohol to a person under 21 years of age. The community board’s Business and Consumer Issues committee took note of this in its resolution to disapprove of the new location’s pending liquor license.

“The applicant has failed since August 2011 to operate a quiet restaurant establishment, where indoor disputes have resulted in police action and an assault on a police officer of the 24th Precinct in front of the premises and where extreme and excessive noise from music and customers during late-night hours, especially between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., have had a detrimental impact on the quality of life of tenants and residents in the area,” the committee’s resolution stated.

The owner of Papasito and co-filer on the liquor license application, Eusebio Chavez, was present at the meeting, but sat quietly throughout and only spoke to confirm that he was in fact the applicant. Chavez instead let Alain Chevreux, who identified himself as a co-owner of Papasito and the owner of a French restaurant across the street, Café du Soleil, speak on his behalf. Chevreux acknowledged the complaints, noting that there had been some prior incidents at the restaurant, but focused mostly on appealing to the board to support a small business venture. Chavez could not be reached for comment after the meeting.

“We are all working people,” Chevreux said. “It’s very easy to vote, we don’t want those people, but in the meantime, we are employing over 40 people in the neighborhood, and even my restaurant across the street has a very very hard time to make ends meet.”

While a few board members were sympathetic to Papasito’s attempts to mitigate the noise and work with the community, others called it the worst example of a disruptive neighborhood establishment they had ever come across.

Residents’ main complaint, and the one point on which Papasito refused to concede, is the late-night closing time on weekends and the club-like atmosphere that the restaurant promotes despite not possessing a cabaret license or being zoned for a club. On Friday and Saturday nights, the restaurant stays open until 4 a.m. They promote free tequila shots and flautas on Friday evenings and sell drinks that can only be described as monstrous, offering their specialty cocktails and margaritas in “Vaso Gigante” sizes for $20 or two for $25. Their specialty, as noted on the cocktail menu, is the “Double Mother Load,” a rainbow margarita with two bottles of Corona in it.

While they don’t plan on toning down the party vibe, Chevreux reiterated to the board that Papasito was willing to accept 14 of the 15 requirements that the committee devised in order to support the liquor license application. The list includes directions to adjust sound levels and move amplifiers to mitigate noise, to only allow live music twice a week and to cut it off after 10 p.m., and to keep employees out of the rear yard after 12:30 a.m. It also stipulated that Papasito not allow dancing and not apply for a cabaret license, that it not allow valet parking and that it addresses the complaints of neighbors immediately when they call about noise levels.

When the Business and Consumer Affairs committee met last month, Fernando Mateo, whose wife Stella is a co-applicant on Papasito’s liquor license, spoke on behalf of the restaurant. Mateo, who is the president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers and recently hosted a fundraiser for presidential candidate Rick Perry at the Papasito’s in Inwood, defended the business and emphasized that it was a struggling new establishment trying to turn a profit that only materializes in the wee hours of the weekend mornings.

At the full board meeting, Chevreaux pleaded for the board not to disapprove their application based on the one point on which they can’t budge.

“I can assure you that only a handful of people here have ever been in the restaurant business. It’s a very difficult business to be in. And if you’re going to vote, I would urge you to vote for this place and to give us a chance. We are making improvements. We are trying our best,” said Chevreaux.

The board ultimately voted against the license, passing a resolution to disapprove it. The State Liquor Authority has the final and official say, but takes community board input into serious consideration when weighing license applications.

“We stay open until four o’clock in the morning on Friday and Saturday because if we don’t do this, it’s a death sentence,” Chevreaux said. Some residents clearly hope for that to be the outcome.