What do you call Resurrected Restaurants?
3 multistate restaurants that had gone away, but are back or coming back.
The reality of it is that most restaurants close. There are more dreams of culinary excellence than kitchen skills or patron appetites to fulfill them. Like the wind, diets and palates change, what was a solid trend and a sure fire way have a successful business gets blown away by the next faster, tastier fad. But like some relationships, when a restaurant that was timeless closes because of mismanagement, or neglect, its absence causes an ache that lasts. But, what if like those rare relationships, the fires can be rekindled?
Restaurants reopening after a short or moderate period of closure isn’t a surprising thing, it happened en masse recently during the onset of the pandemic, with some restaurants still reeling from the experience. But what about those that permanently close, sale or lease signs up on the window, eulogies written by the local food critics? What if they reopen?
On a national scale it’s happened to standalone places like a popular seafood restaurant in Jacksonville Beach, Florida reopening after a 12 year hiatus. A popular sports bar in Cincinnati, Ohio awaking after a six year slumber caused by frequent river flooding. In Norman, Oklahoma, fond memories of breadsticks kickstarting the rebirth of an Italian restaurant 20 years gone. A 20 year hiatus coming to an end for this Mexican restaurant in Fountain Valley, California was also celebrated by fans.
Locally a St. Louis Park drive in that sat idle for 5 years reopened for a year before closing for good, a proposed pizza concept to replace it deciding the space wasn’t right. A crowd favorite in St. Paul was brought back by late great meat maven Jack Riebel and the Smack Shack group after a year of being shuttered.
Standalone restaurants aren’t limited to experiencing this phenomenon either. It was recently announced that Steak and Ale, a chain that went bankrupt and closed in 2008, is planning on opening again, with its first new location in Burnsville, Minnesota.
Butcher and the Boar, another crowd favorite that had a location in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, recently reopened in Minneapolis after a transfer of name and IP rights. Not a chain by most definitions, but multiple locations in multiple states with a link.
In late 2021 I wrote a story about restaurants in Minnesota that were the only location of their multi-state restaurant to be represented in the state. In it I broke down these MN Lonely Links into further categories to categorize them. Were they the last location in the state after the other ones closed? Were they the first, hopeful that more would follow? Were they the kind of restaurant that would only have one location in a major metropolitan area, a Highlander if you will because there can be only one. Do they have the distinction of being the last location of that once broadly located restaurant anywhere? The more than 150 restaurants that are MN Lonely Links visited and documented so far fit into one of those categories. But Butcher and the Boar and the aforementioned Steak and Ale require a new one. Food Phoenixes or Resurrected Restaurants? Those work for both standalone and chains that come back from the seeming dead, since I’m a fan of alliteration. But to continue the chain motif, and the alliteration, this new MN Lonely Link subcategory for zombie chains with one location in Minnesota is the “Lazurus Links.”
If you could bring back any chain restaurant that no longer exists in your area, what would it be?