House of Brews closing

[rnc]

Heard it straight from the owner last night. They will close in a week and are currently looking to sell. I don't know what the problem was, they seemed to have great business at night, and on weekends it was packed. The food was good but overpriced and they took an amazingly long time to prepare a sandwich. I'm pretty ticked about it because it was a great place to have a drink with friends and talk..

On a better note, the new gelato shop is open next door to House of Brews. The gelato is awesome. Come January they will be serving hand tossed pizzas, beer and wine! Sweet!!!!

[3rdGenHuntsvillian]

I heard that the owners daughter was running the place and robbing her blind... Gotta love family.

Just what I heard, I don't know if it is true or not.

[Evad]

Oh man... That sucks. I liked that place. My fiancee was supposed to display some of her art there soon. Oh well...

I have been curious which bars/restaurants downtown will survive, since it seems a lot have opened the past couple of years(or changed ownership). To me, it seems like downtown entertainment grew too fast, too quickly and the amount of people hanging out downtown didn't increase enough. All the madisonites seem to hang out in the crapting madison bars. A shame.

On a better note, I heard from a friend of mine that The Thirsty Turtle is not going to move after all. He said they worked out something with the current owners of the shopping center. This is completely unconfirmed, but man I hope it's true.

[rnc]

Oh man... That sucks. I liked that place. My fiancee was supposed to display some of her art there soon. Oh well...

I have been curious which bars/restaurants downtown will survive, since it seems a lot have opened the past couple of years(or changed ownership). To me, it seems like downtown entertainment grew too fast, too quickly and the amount of people hanging out downtown didn't increase enough. All the madisonites seem to hang out in the crapting madison bars. A shame.

On a better note, I heard from a friend of mine that The Thirsty Turtle is not going to move after all. He said they worked out something with the current owners of the shopping center. This is completely unconfirmed, but man I hope it's true.

[Evad]

The thing is that the House of Brews was doing well from what I could tell. I don't see how a new business could expect to do better after only a year or so being open. It must have been a management or "family" issue as 3rdGen speculated.

Which places are you worried about? Most of the places that I go downtown (which is pretty much all of them except Sammy T's) seem to be doing pretty well.

[3rdGenHuntsvillian]

I think the places that serve food must do a lot of lunch and happy hour buisness from the courthouse and law firms in the area. So just because they look dead at night, doesn't mean that they aren't getting much business.

[rnc]

Mason's is another. I was impressed with this place the couple times I've been. The food was good and reasonably priced. I've been 3 times. Twice, we were pretty much the only people there. The other time there was a good crowd. Drinks are way overpriced. I guess I'm not so much worried about this place closing, but rather farthur limiting the hours they serve food. Currently, they serve food pretty late, which is much needed downtown.

Papou's - Eaten there once and loved it, but I never seem to hear much about it or see many people there. Again, maybe it's just me.

I guess those are the only questionable places to me, but again this is from my own observations. On the other hand, I've noticed several places are doing great. Went to the Chophouse for dinner last night and spent 30 minutes in Humphrey's waiting on our table. Both places were packed! And this was a Tuesday night. This was my first visit to the Chophouse and wow. I dig it. My uncle who was visiting from New Orleans treated us and he too was very impressed. This is a very good thing, considering the high standards he has. He goes out to eat weekly at New Orleans' finest(Galatoire's, Antwoine's, Tujague's, etc)