Sad to announce that Urbano Cafe is shuttering. An announcement was sent out to their followers today with this attached:
Hello Friends – it’s hard to type this note. After 15 years in our Fitzhugh location, Urbano Cafe will be closing at the end of the month. Our last day of service will be Saturday, January 27.
Many may know Urbano as the unique restaurant with a BYOB policy that made incredible food out of a tiny kitchen, and next to Jimmy’s Food Store. The restaurant also had access to a “backyard” which they hosted a variety events throughout the years. This was once the garden space for Tom Spicer.
The email went on to say:
“We did not make this decision to close lightly, but it’s just time for us to move on to our next chapter. We have so many people to thank for our 15 years of success. First off, our amazing team, many of whom have been with us 10+ years, have become like a second family to us. Secondly – and you don’t hear this everyday but our landlord, Mike Turner of J. Elmer Turner, has been an incredible partner and we thank him for his support. And lastly, our wonderful neighbors at Jimmy’s – who even extended their business hours in the early days of Urbano to provide our BYOB customers with access to their great Italian wine selection – have been incredible friends. We will miss them all.
We are proud to leave our neighborhood better than we found it. We love showing this image of our building when we first saw it next to what it is today.”
Well this is by far the worst news of the recent several months. There need to be more places like Urbano Cafe out there, where those of us that really appreciate outstanding food with really good wine and being able to enjoy that without paying 300% markups, this is really rough. We’ve had Mouton, Lafite, Latour, DRC, Pichon Baron, Scarecrow, Palmer, Opus One, Cristal, among others at Urbano… really hoping that we get news of a new location somewhere. Just awful news…
Totally agree.