50 Most Popular Restaurants That Won’t Reopen After The Pandemic

Prolific Seattle restaurateur Tom Douglas temporarily closed 12 of his 13 local establishments in mid-March over coronavirus concerns. Now, he has announced that he won’t reopen this one, a popular pasta place located in one of Amazon’s buildings in the South Lake Union neighborhood. He will also close his Brave Horse Tavern in the same complex. “Many factors weighed into the determination,” he said in a statement, “but in the end, it is the appropriate choice for our business.”

Peripatetic chef-restaurateur and humanitarian José Andrés opened the original America Eats in 2011 as a pop-up on the site of his Café Atlántico to coincide with an American food exhibition called “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” at the National Archives. It moved from there to the suburb of Tysons Corner, Virginia, and then, two years ago, to Georgetown. In late June, a post on the restaurant’s Facebook page announced that “we will not be reopening in our current home, we look forward to revisiting this concept in the future.”

In addition to shuttering his Momofuku Nishi in New York City (see above), Influential chef-restaurateur David Chang announced the demise of his “hometown project” (he was born nearby in northern Virginia) in mid-May after almost five years. According to a message from Momofuku Group CEO Marguerite Zabar Mariscal on the company website, the organization “investigated every scenario to make the math work” in light of the pandemic, but ultimately “the financial picture…no longer made sense.”

After 13 years in business, it’s curtains for Wolfgang Puck’s first restaurant in the nation’s capital. (He retains a subsequently launched branch of his CUT steakhouse in the city’s Rosewood Hotel). A modern Asian restaurant in the basement of what was once the Newseum — an institution devoted to journalism and the First Amendment that closed at the end of 2019 — The Source is now permanently shuttered.

A popular family dining destination since 1938 in this city on Lake Winnebago in eastern Wisconsin, Schreiner’s announced in late May that it was closing its doors. The decision not to reopen, according to a statement on the restaurant website, “was not one that we made easily; unfortunately, it was unavoidable and our only real option given the economics associated with the current pandemic crisis.”