Dan Reilly has already lived many lives—to take just one example, he fled to the West Coast when he was 18, only to return to the city in 2010 to write screenplays for James "A Million Little Pieces" Frey. But his latest chapter is, at least for the enthusiastic boozers of Bushwick, by far the most exciting.
After nearly six years of construction, with setbacks both common (a long delay in getting the gas turned on) and tragic (his initial partner, Ook Seo, passed away during the early pandemic), Reilly opened his first-ever permanent restaurant, The Crush, last summer. Since then, he's been sending first-rate sandwiches and snacks out from the back of Bushwick's rowdy New Wave glam bar Danger Danger.
"On its most basic level, The Crush is about comfort food that's made with care and attention," Reilly told Hell Gate. "What I'm trying to do is conjure up my original sense memory of what these things are—chasing something that exists as my ideal."
![](https://hellgatenyc.com/content/images/2025/01/crush-1.jpg)
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