As a commenter on our earlier review of the Emporio Armani Caffé “reported” last week, the high-end bar/restaurant/café adjacent to the Armani store on Andrássy út has closed. We stopped by over the weekend to confirm the news, and a guard in the building told us the place went dark on the last day of May, which would mean it was open for a grand total of nine months. Not that it all comes as much of a surprise, given the almost total lack of patrons, but given how much cash must have been burned, and the fact that Summer tourist season is just now starting, it’s still pretty stunning. Our feeling is that before pulling the plug entirely they maybe should have closed the kitchen and just focused on being a bar/café. But they obviously decided they should just focus on selling clothes. Either way, ouch.
How was it not 100% obvious to Armani that this sort of place would not work in Budapest? It’s the usual pretentious, culture-less hole that is so common here, but always fails after a few months. White Heaven on Szent Istvan Ter was the same. Only now that it’s a bar with a huge terrace, basically inside the basilica, can it get anyone to stop by.
@Akos,
Surely it was misnamed – should have been The
Laundromat
Those imbeciles took out ads in magazines and newspapers to advertise their “Lunch Offers”, so I had to close them down. One has to try and preserve the high standards that accompany one’s name…
There are restaurants/ shops opening and then closing within months on Andrassy all the time. I always wonder if it’s some money laundering thing that they completely redo a shop area, open some business, close after a few months, and then someone comes in and starts over again with the renovation/decoration..