Mineola’s The Rex is out. The city’s 7th Street Burger is in.
Those subscribed to The Rex’s text list received a message last week letting them know the burger and lobster restaurant that has called Mineola home since 2016 would no longer be. In its place, the notice read would be 7th Street Burgers, a popular chain that started in 2021 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“We thought, there’s people here, people like burgers, let’s open here,” said Kevin Rezvani, the chain’s founder, on deciding to open in the Rex’s old spot. “Let’s see what happens.”
He said he projects the restaurant will open sometime in late June or early July and will be serving up burgers and fries every day from 11 a.m. to midnight. If all goes well, Rezvani said, he thinks he’ll expand the hours until 3 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays to match the schedule his other locations keep.
7th Street offers made-to-order single and double burgers, cheeseburgers, vegan impossible burgers, and regular and loaded fries. The chain’s burgers typically cost from $6.50 to $11.50, with fries at $4.50 and loaded fries, which are topped with cheese, regular or impossible meat, and grilled onions, around $12.
“Nothing is cheap these days,” Rezvani said. “We’re relatively affordable.”
His chain currently has 18 locations across Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, and Brooklyn, one in Hoboken, and one in Washington D.C. This would be his first suburban location, a decision he said he made because he was following a trend of fast-casual restaurants moving out of the city into the suburbs.
Rezvani opened the first 7th Street Burgers on 7th Street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A in Manhattan during the height of COVID restaurant closures. Rent was cheap, he said, and he wanted to embrace the takeout concept that full-service restaurants were being forced to adapt to.
He put the first location on his credit card, a decision he made after closing other burger restaurants he previously had in New Jersey in 2020 that he said weren’t successful.
“I was like, let me try one more time, see what happens,” Rezvani said. “I had to go all out.”
“I thought, I feel like everything’s so overpriced these days. I wanted to open an affordable grab-and-go place to just hang out, just get food,” Rezvani said. “I guess it just hit. I got so busy. 10 months later, I opened location two; month 13, I opened location three. After that, eight locations opened in the second year. And after that, we’ve just kept going.”
“I hope we’re busy,” he said about his upcoming Mineola location. “I hope people like it.”
