Some Guy's House Shut Down After Four Days of Pulley-Delivered Steaks

Some Guy's House operated for exactly four days. The Brooklyn steak pop-up, run from a second-floor window on McKibbin Street with a homemade pulley system, shut down in late October after a single neighbor filed repeated complaints with the city.

Chef Chianli Hang, 24, a tenant of the unit, confirmed the closure to The Post. "I guess we have like at least one, like, mega-hater out there," he said.

The economics were never sound. Hang and five friends spent several hundred dollars on food and equipment, and the operation never turned a profit. This was content first and commerce second — a point the numbers make plain.

How did the business actually work?

The venture opened in late October as a social-media experiment among friends with professional kitchen experience. Several members of the crew wanted an outlet for recipe testing.

"We were just doing this as like a fun bit with our friends," Hang said. "We would sit on the couch like, 'Man, will anyone actually watch a video and physically go here and then give us money for some steak out a window?' And the answer was, 'Yes!'"

The answer, on night one, was barely. The group sold three meals on its first evening. The second night brought 11 sales. Then social media did what it does: influencers arrived to review the stunt, and invitations came in to collaborate with Michelin-rated chefs.

Service ran only Thursday and Friday evenings. That schedule alone signals the model. A two-night-a-week operation with a dozen covers per night cannot cover food costs, let alone labor — and here the labor was unpaid friendship.

What about the health code?

The group built its workaround in plain sight. To skirt city health-code rules, Some Guy's House advertised itself as a business selling $25 stickers, each of which came with a free steak.

Whether that structure would have survived regulatory scrutiny remains unknown. The complaints are still under investigation, and it is not clear whether the city issued any violations. What the record does show is this:

• Six complaints were filed to 311 over the pop-up.
• Two of those complaints led the city Department of Health to send written warnings to the landlord over potential violations.
• The landlord delivered the shutdown news to Hang, after concluding from the complaints that the group might be "running like a full-scale, like, commercial-kitchen operation out of here."

They were not. A residential kitchen with a pulley is not a commercial operation in any sense a health inspector would recognize. But the sticker-with-free-steak framing occupies the same gray zone that has swallowed other unlicensed pop-ups.

Was there money in it?

No. The friends lost several hundred dollars on the run. At $25 per transaction — three sales the first night, 11 the second — the revenue would not have covered the beef alone once costs are counted.

The group had already decided to wind down. They planned one final week of service, had prepared 100 pre-orders for it, and were considering booking a DJ for a closing send-off.

"We were really excited for [the send-off]. But then we got shut down," Hang said.

The premature end came before that final week began.

What does the episode actually prove?

It proves demand exists for spectacle, not for window-delivered steak. Three sales on opening night is the honest baseline. The surge to 11 came only after viral attention, and the Michelin collaboration offers arrived for the story, not the food program.

It also proves that New York's complaint apparatus works quickly when motivated. One complainant, six 311 filings, two written warnings from the Department of Health, and a landlord-mediated shutdown — all within four days of operation. No inspection outcome has been made public.

What remains unsaid is equally telling. Nobody has disclosed total revenue, the cost breakdown, or whether any of the 100 pre-orders will be refunded. The group has not said whether it will relaunch in a licensed format. Until it does, Some Guy's House stands as a four-day case study in how far a $25 sticker can carry an unpermitted kitchen — which, in New York, is not far at all.