Business

Papaya King, the hot dog pioneer in the Upper East, faces a possible end


The future of Papaya Kingan Upper East Side headquarters that is said to have popularized the quintessential New York hot dog and juice drink combination; is in question as its building is about to be razed. .

Extell Development, which last year acquired the land where Papaya King is located for $21 million, having submitted to the city on June 28 a plan to demolish the one-story commercial building. Developer known for luxury apartmentincluding Central Park Tower above Billionaire goods in Midtown.

It’s unclear when demolition could take place, or when the restaurant might have to clear space on the corner of East 86th Street and Third Avenue. Neither Extell nor the people who currently run the restaurant would comment.

The proposed demolition, reported by Patchcame as an unwanted surprise last week to Papaya King employees and customers.

Joan Roth, 80, who lives in the restaurant’s Yorkville neighborhood and has been a patron for 57 years says: “When I feel like I want something really tasty, something to sustain me, here I come. “You go to a place all these years, and you become attached to it.”

Papaya King founder Gus Poulos, a Greek immigrant, started his business in the 1930s with a juice stand in Brooklyn called Hawaiian Tropical Drinks. During vacations in Florida, he tasted juices made from tropical fruits for the first time and began to introduce them to people up north.

In the late 1940s, he opened Papaya King on the Upper East Side, and a few years later, opened more sausages – formalizing the marriage of hot dogs and juices that would become New York staples . He and his friend who owns Papaya King’s sausage supplier, Marathon Enterprises, created an exclusive formula for the restaurant.

The restaurant’s unusual menu inspired many local imitators with similar names, including Grey’s Papaya, Papaya Heaven, Papaya Paradise, and Papaya Place. Papaya King was even yelled at in an episode of “Seinfeld”.

In the 1970s, the restaurant implemented what The New York Times called “hot dog price warWith Nathan’s famous hot dog, a Coney Island institution, after Nathan’s opened a location next to Papaya King. Both businesses continuously reduced prices, and Nathan’s eventually closed.

“And we won,” said Peter Poulos, 83, Poulos’ son, who later took over the business. He said in the early 2000s he sold it to a new owner, who he would not be able to identify. The relationship between Extell, the restaurant’s former landlord, and the owner has been tied in litigation since May 2020.

John Pierse, 73, of Yorkville, has been visiting Papaya King since he was an infant. He always stuck with the same order: a simple sausage (later two sausages) and the restaurant’s largest portion of papaya juice.

“Papaya King” is a “background for the people in that neighborhood,” Mr. Pierse said. He recalls posters promoting a cow ecstatically eating papaya, and his childhood fascination with a machine that squeezes fresh orange juice. Years later, he introduced his children to the restaurant, just as his parents had started him decades earlier.

Mr Pierse said: “It’s just something that’s always been there, and he added that he was saddened to hear of the demolition. “You only felt comfortable with the fact that Papaya King was there.”

Louis Nieves, 60, and his fiancée, Ginette Velez, 58, who used to live in the Bronx but is now in Orlando, Fla., visited Papaya King during a July 4 trip to New York. They recall traveling to the Upper East Side to see a movie, order papaya juice and sausage, then board the express train home.

“It was the end of an era,” Ms. Velez said.

This is not the first time the Papaya King has faced extinction. Poulos recounted that the landlord had previously tried unsuccessfully to get city permission to replace the building with a high-rise in the early 2000s.

“A corner is too valuable to make it into a one-story building,” he said. “It’s like everything else. Everything must come to an end in the end.”

Sheelagh McNeill Contributing research.



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