Another restaurant that used to be a contender bites the dust:
After 15 years of working at Cafe Josie, the last seven of those as owner, the 38-year-old Taylor decided it was time to turn off the lights for good at the West Sixth Street restaurant established by his mentor, chef Charles Mayes, in 1997.
“My connection with Cafe Josie runs deeper than anything I have in my life,” Taylor told the Statesman recently. “It’s been a painful two months once I made that decision, and I’m still struggling with it, whether or not I made the right decision.”
The coronavirus devastated Austin’s economy and disrupted its culture in mid-March, as dining rooms were forced to close, but Taylor had already come to terms with Cafe Josie’s future a couple of weeks earlier.
Taylor says his restaurant experienced four record-breaking years in a row under executive chef Todd Havers, but with his lease ending in 2021, Taylor expected his rent to double. He countered this anticipation with plans to add lunch service, Saturday brunch and a catering operation, which he thought would bring in enough money to help the restaurant thrive into the future.
But Taylor says his landlord, Larry McGuire, whose companies own the Pecan Square shopping center and operate the adjacent Clark’s, was not amenable to expansions of the restaurant’s footprint that were part of Taylor’s plans.
Cafe Josie used to be one of our favorite fine dining venues, but after the millennium their menu changed and it didn’t seem to be as good. Also, parking has simply gotten far more difficult to find over the years.