KFC Corporation

At noon on Friday, a towncar driver in a black suit stood beside his parked Lincoln, staring at the shuttered storefront at 331 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village.

"This is the place from the TV, right?" he asked.

This is, indeed, the place---one month to the day, in fact, after the infamous video of rats running amok inside the two-pronged fast-food joint triggered a Health Department crackdown on restaurants citywide.

"It was a rat party," the parked driver said, laughing. "The rats were having a party."

More than 200 restaurants have failed inspections since the infamous video aired. At one point, inspectors were shuttering an average of nine eateries a day--triple the usual number.

Just this week, inspectors slammed the door on Papaya Dog on the Upper East Side after news crews filmed rats at that location, too.

Some eateries that inspectors initially shut down have since reopened. But not the place that started it all, which remains a quiet monument to the original scampering spectacle.

Two bright yellow signs, reading "CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE," remain affixed to the papered windows. Passers-by have added plenty of their own comments to the garish placards, ranging from "TRY OUR NEW BURRATO!" to "THE REAL RATS OWN THIS PLACE!" One amateur cartoonist drew a rat head sticking out of an "X-TRA CRISPIE" bucket.

"They should sell it," suggested the spectating driver, as he returned to his car and then drove off.

Operator ADF Companies, which closed a number of its KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut franchises in the city after the debacle, announced in a March 1 statement that the venues will all reopen once "they are fully inspected and given a clean bill of health."

A company spokesperson has yet to return phone calls seeking an update.

- Chris Shott

The reverberations of the KFC rat scandal continue. The city has temporarily shuttered The Coffee Shop, the Union Square eatery for the lithe and the trendy, suggesting that it's not just fast-food joints caught up in the anti-rodent dragnet. (The city has reportedly closed 83 eateries since Feb. 26.)

"After 17 years of business and a clean bill of health, they have decided that we cannot store a sealed jar of olives on the floor, we need rubber gloves in our resuscitation kit, and we must place end caps on our fluourescent light bulbs in our dish area and prep kitchen," reads a bright orange sign on The Coffee Shop's door.

The sign blames the closing on the recent rodent infestation at the West 4th Street outpost of Kentucky Fried Chicken. No word on when The Coffee Shop will be slinging mojitos again, but The Real Estate has calls out to the shop's owner and the Health Department.

UPDATE: Coffee Shop owner Charles Milite tells The Real Estate on Monday afternoon:

"This is a pretty sad situation. The Health Department came in on Thursday afternoon. They are usually here for 45 minutes. Three-and-a-half hours later, they are still there and we are shaking our heads.

"We're trying to get open as soon as possible. One of my partners is down at the Health Department now filling out the paperwork. We are trying to be re-inspected this afternoon. But if they want to keep us closed, they are going to find things.

"This is entirely due to the KFC thing. It's completely unfair. No one is thinking this through at all. None of our violations have to do with rats and rodents, but people are going to think that now."

- Mark Wellborn