“Café Artiste’s closing is fraught with mystery,” declares the River Oaks Examiner. A sign posted on the front door of the cafe at 1601 W. Main St. near the Menil reads “Café Artiste will be closed today — sorry for any inconvenience.” The sign has been posted for about a month.
People are pining for their favorite hangout and its owners’ whereabouts, but no one seems to have an answer. Messages scrawled onto the “closed” sign reveal the sudden nature of the cafe’s closing as well as people’s curiosity and, in some cases, their disappointment.
“Dude, what gives?” read one handwritten message, while the question “Forever?” had been scribbled right under the words “closed today” along with a sad face drawn next to it. . . .
A separate sign in the window, put there by Keller Williams Realty, said the property is up for lease, but calls to the company were not immediately returned.
After the jump: those signs!
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Counter and kitchen help wanted too! The mystery deepens . . .
- Where have all the artistes gone? [Houston Community Newspapers]
- Cafe Artiste (CLOSED) [B4-U-Eat]
Photos: Flickr users lcboelsche (top) and DrPantzo (signs; license)
3 Comments
My friend used to work at Artiste and we’ve seen this coming for months. They didn’t even have the money to pay their employees on time, much less keep the cafe running. This place had been going downhill for a long time.
Hmm. Ever-broken wifi, so-so coffee, uninspiring food - I can’t imagine what went wrong. (note that I used to really like the place and spent quite a bit of time and money there.)
I remember when that building housed Chicago Pizza Company. Pretty good pizza, that. Anyway, a few months ago some friends and I wound up at Cafe Artiste for dessert and coffee on a weeknight. We were a bunch of middle-aged guys, just hanging out, not being rowdy or noisy at all. We did have a conversation and some laughter, certainly nothing that would be unusual in any restaurant. We were very amused by all the very dirty looks we were getting from the place’s twenty-something clientele, all of whom were absorbed in their laptops and totally silent, even to the person sitting across from them with their laptop. It was very surreal. Even so, we’re going to miss Cafe Artiste.