Twitter Mourns the Loss of Guy Fieri’s Times Square Restaurant

The NYC branch of Flavortown is saying goodbye, cruel world. Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square will serve its last squirt of Donkey Sauce on December 31, Eater NY reports.

News of the closure comes as a surprise: Though the restaurant, which opened in 2012, was thoroughly skewered by New York Times critic Pete Wells in a now-legendary restaurant review, it was also one of the nation’s highest-grossing independent restaurants, racking up $17 million in sales in 2016.

Despite serving some objectively terrible food at his restaurants, the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host has morphed into somewhat of a folk hero in recent years — and as such, Twitter users have gathered to mourn the loss of what may be the most Times Square-iest of all the Times Square tourist trap dining destinations.

Kicking things off is Wells himself, who laments the fact that the many questions he posed to Fieri in his 2012 takedown (such as, “Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are?”) will likely never be answered:

Of course, it wouldn’t be Twitter without at least one conspiracy theory: Could Kardashian-adjacent Instagram star Jonathan “Foodgod” Cheban responsible for killing Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar? He did, after all, eat there just days ago, as Buzzfeed’s Katie Notopoulos points out:

• Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar to Close December 31 [Eater NY]
• The Best Moments From Guy Fieri’s Wild Year [E]