Around 2 p.m. today, a Grub Street operative descended (or rather ascended?) on Shake Shack’s new uptown location and reported, incredibly, that there was no line! Danny Meyer and his team really sneaked this one by everyone — was their pompous announcement of a new column over at The Atlantic’s Food Channel just a Trojan horse of sorts? Actually, some people saw this coming. Our spy writes: “The employees said there was a line outside at midday waiting for them to open. It went as far as the scaffolding for the next building — maybe 10-15 feet? But they said they cleared that line inside straight away.” At the time of that report, there were eleven people lined up inside, one of them with a stopwatch (oh, you bloggers!). Our wait was about seven and a half minutes to get served, plus another seven minutes for food. “The inside and outside seating areas are both about two-thirds full, between one-half and two-thirds.” Of course, all of this intel will be moot when the masses descend, but in the meantime, click through our photos to see a blessedly empty (if somewhat blurry) Shake Shack Upper East Side.
