Junior's; a fond farewell

When I first moved to NY in the early 1970’s it seemed like everybody I knew, family and friends, needed to take me to Junior’s Restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.  Not that I was keen on trying pastrami or brisket or pickled anything, but it turned out they had a point.  Cheesecake!  Presumably the best ever in the history of mankind.  I had been exposed to cheesecake before, of course, but it had never caught my fancy and I didn’t really like the lumps.  Junior’s cheesecake was a revelation and lived up to the hype heaped upon it.  Smooth, creamy and, oh, so sweetly delicious!
 
Early on I zeroed in on the cheesecake with the strawberry topping and it became my main reason for going to Junior’s even though other menu items were also very good.  As times changed and I relocated within the environs of Brooklyn I didn’t go to Junior’s as often but there was comfort in knowing it was there.
 
Over the years the area in which Junior’s was located went from good to bad to awful and back to good again, and now the booming real estate market in downtown Brooklyn has made the land on which it sits worth, according to admittedly biased real estate agents, a giddy $55 million.  The Rosen family, who founded a restaurant on that corner in the 1920’s, changed its name to Junior’s in 1954 and bought the building in 1981 has decided it’s time to cash out.
 
The property is zoned for only 11 stories but I wouldn’t be surprised, once it becomes a hole in the ground, that the sky doesn’t become the limit with some strategic law-mandering.  The current owner, still a Rosen, claims another Junior’s will open within whatever edifice arises on that spot.  Somehow I doubt if they will be able to afford the rent and, besides, there are now other branches of the Junior’s franchise in NYC, with another one scheduled to open near the new Barclay Center.  So I think you can probably strawberry-kiss that particular cheesecake, at that location, goodbye.