The iconic Egg’s Nest restaurant in High Falls has closed unexpectedly. Owners Cristina and Eric Silver had planned to re-open “in early May” after a spring break meant to “hit the reset button.” But on Friday, May 5 they alerted their friends and customers on Facebook that they would cease operation after learning that Eric requires “immediate medical attention.”
“Doing whatever it takes to ensure that I can be around for as long as possible to be a loving husband and father is my number-one priority right now,” Eric wrote. Eric and Cristina, who have a four-year-old daughter Ruthie, returned to the Hudson Valley from California after buying the restaurant in 2016 from Richard and Gillian Murphy.
It was Murphy who gave the building at Route 213 and Bruceville Road its quirky character. Over four decades, he painted every inch of wall, table and floor with brightly colored flowers, birds and people, integrating beads and glitter and adding knick-knacks from his travels to every nook. Cristina, an artist with Latin American roots, and Eric, an actor raised in Woodstock, cleaned and refurbished the restaurant and expanded its menu. At the time, Eric told Hudson Valley One, “retaining the essence of it is key.”
The Silvers added eggs to The Egg’s Nest menu and paid homage to its past with signature cocktails named Splendor in the Grass (the movie that was filmed in High Falls), Parsonage Punch, Discovery of Cement and Murphy’s Law.
The young couple weathered the very challenging pandemic, serving take-out meals and making the most of their outdoor space during the warmer months. They said, “we felt that it was our duty to persevere and continue to feed and nourish those in need in their darkest hours.”
As Murphy’s murals on the outside walls of The Egg’s Nest began to fade, they repainted, using neon green, canary yellow and fuchsia, but leaving space for Murphy’s florals. The building has retained its status as an eye-popping but welcoming High Falls landmark.
By this spring, the strain of running a restaurant while raising a young child was becoming impossible to ignore. They posted this realization on Facebook: “Over the years we delayed and postponed breaks. We skipped any and every family/friend gathering and put this restaurant ahead of our family and our health. We subscribed to the ideology that when you are in this industry, you can’t ever live a normal life or find any sort of balance.”
The Silvers say they’ve been proud of their time as The Egg’s Nest’s proprietors. “It brought us back home to be close to our families once again and it will forever hold a dear place in our hearts. We began our own family here and must now put our focus back on preserving that family for what we pray is many years to come.”
At this point, The Egg’s Nest will be open for private parties and pop-ups only. As for the future, Silver says he’s open to “any and all possibilities.” He says, “Though this marks the end of this particular chapter in its 50 year story, it is our hope that what we are leaving behind will find itself in someone else’s capable hands so that the colorful history and legacy of The Egg’s Nest will live on.”
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