BY COLIN MIXSON
A Carroll Gardens restaurateur
this week shuttered his
beloved Middle Eastern eatery
on Smith Street after 20 years
in the neighborhood.
The owner of Zaytoons
served his last meal at the establishment
between Sackett
and Degraw streets on Nov.
20, before closing its kitchen
for good in an attempt to wind
down after decades of feeding
hungry locals, he said.
“I’m just trying to simplify
my life,” said Faried Assad.
“It really came down to, I got
tired.”
But Assad didn’t quit the
local culinary game entirely
— he will still be whipping up
delicacies at Zaytoons Vanderbilt
Avenue outpost in
Prospect Heights, which he
said is larger and more profi table
than the Carroll Gardens
fl agship due to its outdoor
garden, and proximity to ice
cream.
“If you’re living the same
distance between Carroll Gardens
DINE AND DASH: Zaytoons owner Faried Assad closed the fl agship Carroll
Gardens outpost of his Middle Eastern restaurant on Nov. 20.
Photo by Colin Mixson
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and Prospect Heights,
they go to Prospect, because
they can fi nd seating, there’s
a garden, and Ample Hills
Creamery is across the street,”
he said.
And the entrepreneur, who
owns the Smith Street building
his restaurant occupied,
is keeping the spot in the business
by leasing it out to the
owners of burger joint Nature’s
Grill.
Assad claimed he could
have raked in gobs of cash by
renting the space to a bar or an
Italian restaurant instead, but
said the area is already lousy
with those establishments, so
he chose to go with the burger
makers, whom he suspects
will start serving their selfproclaimed
“healthy” grub as
soon as February.
“I love the neighborhood,
and I wanted something the
neighborhood could use,” he
said.
Assad, a Brooklyn-born
son of immigrant parents and
a life-long Carroll Gardens
resident, broke into the restaurant
business in 1998 by
opening the Smith Street Zaytoons
in the ground fl oor of the
building he said his old man
bought back in the ’80s. Business
boomed from the start,
he said, and customers from
across the borough trekked to
the dining room for a taste of
his chicken shawarma or pitacrust
pizza pies.
But Brooklyn’s palate got a
little too hip for its own good
over the years, and these days
there’s a halfway-decent Middle
Eastern spot in almost
every neighborhood, eliminating
the need to travel to
Carroll Gardens for a good kabob,
Assad said.
“Things did change,” he
said. “People from Bedford-
Stuyvesant and Bushwick
were like, why come here,
there’s one in every neighborhood.”
But competition wasn’t
the only factor that led Assad
to close up shop. Earlier
this year, the entrepreneur
coughed up $10,000 to settle a
lawsuit fi led against his business
under the Americans
with Disabilities Act, and that
payment, coupled with rising
costs of labor and other fi -
nancial penalties he received
from the state’s Department of
Labor, made its continued operation
infeasible, he said.
“It just became harder to
do business,” he said. “Things
are changing, and everything
is more expensive.”
Still, the closure came as
sad news to current Carroll
Garden residents, many of
whom don’t remember a time
before Zaytoons, which one local
said was among the fi rst
places she visited after moving
to the area.
“This is one of the fi rst
places I discovered in the
neighborhood,” said Alex Kalita.
“I’m going to miss it.”
Zay it ain’t so!
Restaurateur closes Zaytoons in Carroll Gardens