Fat Boys Burgers has closed its East Village location at 231 First Avenue between 13th and 14th streets after a little more than a year in business, with a for-rent sign now hanging in the window. The Hell's Kitchen-born burger chain quietly went dark toward the end of summer, as neighborhood readers first noted, closing out a run that began in June 2025.
The closure was first reported by EV Grieve, which noted the East Village shop was the second location for the business, following the original Fat Boys Burgers that launched in Hell's Kitchen. That flagship, according to Grubhub, was founded by Hell's Kitchen natives Alla and his brother Naz along with their brother-in-law Ahmed Mohsen, who set up shop at 853 Ninth Avenue in a former deli space between West 55th and 56th streets. The East Village menu, per the same EV Grieve report, included burgers, fries, loaded chicken fries, and shakes.
A Storefront That Just Can't Keep a Tenant
The First Avenue space has a rough recent history. Pizzeria Vinny Vincenz ran the address for 18 years before closing in spring 2021, and since then the storefront has cycled through four different businesses in five years, the outlet's reporting notes. Chick-N-Smash took over the space in December 2023 before Fat Boys Burgers moved in, continuing a pattern of short-lived food concepts at that exact address along lower First Avenue.
Fat Boys Burgers built its identity on its Hell's Kitchen roots, featuring a devil-themed cook mascot with horns and a tail on its marquee and staff shirts, according to the company's own site. The original Ninth Avenue location leans into late-night traffic, staying open until 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, per Fat Boys Burgers' listed hours. Those hours mirror the kind of nightlife-driven business model that has become a flashpoint of competition across the East Village's burger scene.
A Crowded Late-Night Burger Scene
The East Village has added several new burger options in recent months, per EV Grieve's reporting, with Herbie's Burgers and Skinny Louie both arriving nearby. Herbie's Burgers opened its first Manhattan outpost at 109 First Avenue between 6th and 7th streets this past September, putting a direct competitor just blocks from where Fat Boys Burgers had set up shop. Miami-born smash burger chain Skinny Louie expanded its Manhattan footprint in July by opening its fourth NYC location at 141 Second Avenue, as Hoodline reported in its piece on the chain crashing the neighborhood's late-night burger scene.
That scene traces back to 2021, when fast-casual chain 7th Street Burger launched its first location in the East Village before expanding across Manhattan and into other East Coast cities — a trajectory Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the chain's hiring push for a Conshohocken location. The neighborhood's burger boom has coincided with broader retail churn: longtime East Village eatery Mimi Cheng's closed its original 179 Second Avenue location this past September 11 after 12 years, a casualty of lease expiration rather than burger competition, as Hoodline previously reported.
Regulatory Pressure on Flame-Grilled Kitchens
Charbroiled burger concepts across the city also face mounting regulatory scrutiny. The NYC Department of Environmental Protection has proposed air quality rules requiring restaurants that cook more than 875 pounds of meat per week on commercial charbroilers to install emissions control devices or phase out older units, according to Hoodline's earlier reporting on the regulations. Such requirements can add operating and compliance costs for flame-grilled burger shops already competing in a saturated market.
For now, Fat Boys Burgers continues to operate its original Ninth Avenue flagship in Hell's Kitchen, even as its brief East Village chapter comes to a close. The 231 First Avenue storefront sits empty again, its for-rent sign the latest marker in a stretch of real estate that has struggled to hold onto a tenant since Vinny Vincenz shut its doors in 2021.
