BREAK-IN BREAD AT EATERIES
LES joint latest vic of city rob surge
A thief smashed the glass door of Lower East Side Argentinian restaurant Balvanera at around 4 a.m. Sunday, fleeing with $400 from the cash drawer.
It’s the restaurant’s third break-in since last year, ringing up a tab of thousands of dollars in damages.
“Every time, they break the glass and walk right to the cash register,” Fernando Navas, chef and owner of Balvanera on Stanton Street, told The Post.
“I called 911. I told them, ‘I’m letting you know this is the third time,’ ” Navas said.
He is not alone: Restaurant owners across Manhattan are being hit by an uptick in restaurant smashand-grabs, they tell The Post.
And some restaurateurs said they’ve suffered repeat attacks and have lost thousands in cash and computer equipment.
Owners say a lack of police on patrol in the early hours and repeat offenders who face no repercussions are to blame.
Burglaries on the Lower East Side have gone up 63.6% this year in the 28-day period ending June 25 compared to 2022, according to the NYPD.
‘Out of control’
“The break-ins are getting out of control. It was not like this preCOVID,” Nick Moshkovich — director of operations at nearby Bonberi Mart on West 11th Street, which experienced an attempted break-in on May 14 at around 5 a.m. — told The Post.
His neighbor, 11th Street Cafe, has also been hit with a string of smash-and-grab attacks.
“We’re on a quiet street — they’re [burglars] targeting us because there’s less foot traffic. Police drive by, but there’s no boots on the ground,” Moshkovich said.
Navas’ Balvanera eatery was burglarized in November 2022 and again in January 2022, with the glass front door destroyed and the cash drawer cleared out each time.
Each time, Navas closed the business for hours while waiting for detectives to survey the scene.
But he told The Post he can’t afford to lose any more money, and when he was hit Sunday, he pressed ahead with business.
“I’m not going to go through the full report and wait four or five hours for the detective to come because I’m going to lose more money. If I don’t open for brunch, that’s another $4,000 or $5,000 that I lose,” he told The Post.
Since opening in 2014, Balvanera had experienced only one break-in before the pandemic at the end of 2019. Since 2020, Navas said, things have gotten worse.
“There are less police on the streets. If you walk around the Lower East Side, you see people who look like zombies — people on heroin, on fentanyl. It’s too hard to have a business in NYC,” Navas said.
‘Small businesses suffer’
The repeat crimes, coupled with the expense of running a restaurant and living in New York City, has motivated Navas and his family to relocate permanently to Pittsburgh, where he has relatives, he said.
“It makes you think about closing the restaurant. What am I doing?” said Navas, who will open an outpost of Balvanera in the coming months in Pittsburgh. “Small businesses suffer in New York.”