After almost 90 years in the same location in New York City’s Upper East Side, an iconic shop that served what Julia Child once called “the best hot dog in New York City” has shuttered its original location… but moving across the street.

Local media has been reporting Papaya King’s demise for months. Those rumors mention that the building’s owners are planning to demolish the space to make way for a new, sparkling luxury condominium tower.

But the nearly-century-old institution of hot dog royalty has more lives than a cat, proving ts resilience and staying power amidst copy-cats and luxury towers alike.

The story of Papaya King and how it got its name, why it added hot dogs to its menu and how it became a New York City staple, beating out more than a dozen fakes and copycats that tried riding on its popular named coat-tails is the stuff of dreams… more specifically, the American Dream.

In 1923 Constantine “Gus” Poulos, a young immigrant from Athens, Greece arrived in New York City and was processed, like millions of other immigrants, at Ellis Island.

He was penniless but smart and ambitious and soon found work in a deli, which he ended up buying a few years later. Poulos quickly learned how food businesses were run and probably a thing or two about the peculiar rates that New Yorkers had.

After a 1932 vacation to Miami and Havana, Cuba Gus discovered the unique flavors of tropical fruit drinks. Upon returning to New York City he shuttered his deli and opened Hawaiian Tropical Drinks, New York City’s first juice bar on the corner of 86th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.

At the time, the neighborhood was largely comprised of Polish and German immigrants and their first generations and Poulos saw an opportunity to cater to their taste buds– and increase his store’s sales. By 1939 hot dogs were added to the menu right alongside those strange, tropical fruit drinks that he first introduced to city dwellers a few years earlier.

Fast forward almost a century.

The Papaya King has become a New York City staple.

Both Elvis and The Beatles ate Papaya King dogs when they visited the city and the shop has been mentioned in numerous films and TV shows including an iconic moment on an episode of Seinfeld when a hungry Cosmo Kramer leaves the movie theater line stating “I don’t want a movie hot dog, I want a Papaya King hot dog!”

Over the decades, numerous imitations emerged selling the similar combination of hot dogs and tropical drinks that was pioneered by Gus Poulos: Papaya Heaven, Papaya Paradise, Papaya Place, Papaya Circle, Papaya World, Frank’s Papaya, Papaya Jack, and Original Papaya all operated at one time in New York City. They are all long gone.

Gus Poulos passed away in 1988 and his son Peter Poulos and nephew Alexander Poulos continued to run the business for almost a decade before selling the rights to the Papaya King brand to a private equity firm in 1997.

April 2023… the original location that has been selling hot dogs and tropical fruit juices to hungry New Yorkers for 90 years has closed… but is just moving literally across the street.