Last night, we ate at Taste on Melrose for the umpteenth time. Tonight it closed for the final time.
I didn’t know Christian, the owner and chef, particularly well, but we were friendly enough to greet each other in public (and I can’t say that about many people). But he clearly wasn’t happy about it closing. When I asked him what he was planning to do next he said, I think only half joking, “rob banks.”
Even if the 90-percent first-year failure rate is a myth, the restaurant industry is brutal. Taste lasted eight years. I don’t know what killed it. But speculation — completely unsubstantiated speculation — was that rules preventing drug company reps from wining and dining doctors from the nearby university hospital made a huge dent in the restaurant’s business. It couldn’t have helped the there were likely fewer recruitment dinners as budgets there were slashed, too.
Taste is where my wife and I ate dinner the day we were married; just the two of us after a simple morning wedding in a magistrate’s office. The magistrate’s office was destroyed in an F5 tornado in 2006. And now with the closing of Taste, we’re left with Village Inn, the family restaurant where one of our witnesses took us to breakfast, as the last physical reminders of our wedding day.
And that makes me as sad as another good restaurant closing.
Photo by Taste on Melrose on Flickr.
I feel bad for your personal loss, but we never cared for Taste on Melrose. I'm not one to harp on large portion size, but I once order scallops with linguine there for about $25 and got three scallops set around a thin pile of linguine. I unraveled that thin pile and it was actually just one linguine strand. I'm not surprised that TOM is not Recession Eats.
I feel for you and your wife. My husband and I loved Taste. It was the only really great restaurant we know of in Iowa (we are from California). We have been away this past year and were shocked to drive by two weeks ago and see it GONE!!! Very disappointing. I have a feeling we will be waiting a long time for another restaurant of this caliber to open in Iowa City.