Some restaurant closures hurt more than others. It’s not always about the food itself, although it’s often the key element. To a guy who has eaten at over 4,000 restaurants across six continents, the losses that sting most are the classics. Take NYC’s 21 Club, for example. Not the world’s finest food, but an incomparable feeling of being immersed in New York City Prohibition-era history. And a killer martini.

With more restaurant closures now than ever, we’re losing everything from local joints, the places that define a neighborhood, to the legendary establishments that define an era. I was particularly saddened by the recently announced closing of Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse on New York’s Lower East Side. Again, not because of the food, although it was pretty good, but because of the memories, the experience, and the memory of the experience.

Sammy’s describes itself as a place serving classic Jewish comfort food and vodka in a basement dining room studded with photos. It was semi-dingy, claustrophobic, cacophonous, and wonderful. It was a destination restaurant well-suited to a celebration for a large party. Truth be told, I had only gone twice in its 47-year run, both times for that precise purpose.

Rosenthal, Party of 12

My first visit in 1980, when Sammy’s was just five years old, is forever etched in my memory. We were six couples just out of college, in our very early 20’s, reunited for a celebration. We sat at a round table on which was placed Sammy staples: bread, pickles, a bottle of vodka encased in a block of ice, and a small pitcher of schmaltz to be poured like syrup, over almost anything.

Ice-cold vodka, which goes down oh-so-easy, was also consumed injudiciously, in the way that young 20-somethings can.

The ceilings in this below-ground bunker are low. A guy played mostly Jewish songs on an electric keyboard in the corner. Some people get up to dance and others to sing.

The highlight of the meal actually comes with dessert, when cold milk, chocolate syrup, and bottles of seltzer are delivered to every table. Why? To make your own egg creams. It is created by a precise formulation of cold whole milk, only from a glass bottle; chocolate syrup — but not just any chocolate syrup — it must be Fox’s U-Bet syrup; and seltzer, expelled aggressively, only from those old-fashioned, refillable, glass seltzer bottles.

The second was a game I loved, commonly seen at carnivals, amusement parks, and boardwalks, in which one shot high-powered water pistols into a clown’s mouth until the balloon on its head exploded. Do that before your competitors and you won a prize.

I also recall the middle-aged redhead at the next table who stood up to sing along to Hava Nagila. She was what my people might refer to as zaftig. We had each consumed half a bottle of vodka by that point in the night and, with images of the Three Stooges dancing in my mind amidst this carnival-like atmosphere, I grabbed a bottle of seltzer and waited for Big Red to hit a high note, at which point I aimed for the back of her throat and sent a streaming geyser of seltzer right down her gullet. Let me just say immodestly that if she were wearing a balloon on her head instead of a bouffant, I would have left Sammy’s that night with a stuffed animal.

Instead, she screamed a scream that could be heard around the Lower East Side. Or as they would say in Yiddish, she let out a geschrei — at which point every waiter in the joint instantly descended in force to confiscate our remaining bottles of bubbly, and whatever vodka was left. (Not much.) Which brings to mind this classic song from the comedic singer/songwriter Allan Sherman, entitled “Seltzer Boy.”

It was wrong of me. It was immature. It was hilarious. So much so that it has remained a vivid memory that has endured for 40 years.

Most restaurant closures are inherently sad. People lose jobs. Neighborhoods lose gems. Although the French term for little death (la petite mort), refers to a post-orgasm sensation likened to death, that’s how I would characterize the end of an era for the places that hold a special place in our hearts or memories.

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