50 Popular Restaurants That Won’t Reopen After the Pandemic

After 46 years in business in this Atlanta suburb, Anne and Bill’s — known for its meat-and-three menu (various meats served with a variety of side dishes), its breakfasts, and its homemade desserts — is going out of business. A statement from the restaurant in mid-May said that “our sales have dropped so low that we cannot continue to operate….”

“[O]ften credited as the first restaurant in Hawai’i with a focus on craft beer,” according to Honolulu Magazine, this popular pub and its associated craft brewery, Bent Tail Brewing Co., has poured its last pint. “We were going to lose money if we reopened,” co-owner Lisa Kim told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in mid-June. “Mahalo to the many team members, guests, industry friends and beer geeks we have had the honor to meet and befriend,” said a message on the REAL website.

This well-loved West Loop restaurant was opened 22 years ago by Paul Kahan, who has since become one of Chicago’s best-known chef-restaurateurs (his other places include Avec, Publican, and Big Star). Blackbird’s intimate size and layout made social distancing impossible, and the restaurant announced on its website, “we have made the very difficult decision to close our doors.”

An offshoot of an upscale Los Angeles-based Japanese restaurant with a celebrity clientele opened in Chicago three years ago, specializing in creative sushi offerings and top-of-the-line wagyu beef cooked on charcoal imported from Japan. The group that owns Katana (in addition to L.A., there is another location in Dubai) announced in mid-May that it would not be reopening.

The demise of the legendary K-Paul’s in mid-July is one of the most significant of all COVID-related restaurant closures. This highly influential Cajun establishment was opened in 1979 by chef Paul Prudhomme (formerly of Commander’s Palace, where he trained Emeril Lagasse and other subsequently famous chefs) and his wife, Kay. Lines formed nightly outside the restaurant, and with such vividly flavored dishes as the iconic blackened redfish, K-Paul’s ignited a nationwide craze for Cajun cooking. Kay died of cancer in 1993 and Prudhomme followed in 2015, but the place stayed open under the chef’s niece, Brenda Prudhomme, and her chef husband. After several coronavirus-mandated closings and reopenings earlier this year, though, they issued a statement on July 13 saying “the management team of K-Paul’s is regretfully announcing permanent closure of K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen.”