Fine dining restaurant in Detroit to close in March due to costs, family
Albena restaurant, distinctive for its multicourse chef’s tasting-style menu, will shutter next month. The restaurant, tucked away inside the Siren Hotel, will close on March 16, owners Tiffany and Garrett Lipar announced Tuesday on Instagram.
In 2017, the couple wrote in their Instagram post announcing the closure, that they set out to “build an intimate and ambitious tasting menu-only restaurant in the Great Lakes.”
“A minimalist approach to progressive dining” is the restaurant’s description on the Albena website.
The decision to bring Albena to a close, Garrett Lipar said Wednesday morning, has been weighing on the couple for quite a while.
“We have recently started a family, and now have a little one at home. And, of course, that changes a lot,” Garrett Lipar said.
With a tasting menu only, Lipar said they are constantly trying to push boundaries and explore the realm of great cuisine.
“We have cooked, plated, served, and cleaned so many dishes. We are incredibly proud of the food and service that came from this tiny kitchen,” the owners posted on Instagram. “We have changed the minds of so many people, including our own about fine dining.”
But Lipar told the Free Press that Albena’s space is limited (the restaurant is just 344 square feet) and that they are living within the constraints of a tasting menu and price point.
Across the restaurant industry, Lipar said, overall costs have gone up exponentially and are a factor in the closing.
“It’s made small margins even smaller. We pay way too much for most of everything,” he said. “To bring the best to the guests, that’s raised our prices a lot as well through the years.“
Costs, Lipar said, have pushed guests out
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