The good news is that our recent decision to open up a "recently-closed" tag for stories about restaurants that have thrown in the towel seems to have been prescient. The bad news is that we are now attaching it to a story about Segal, which last fall became one of those rare restaurants to open for business and jump straight onto our "Top 33" list of favorite Budapest eateries.

As we wrote at the time, reviewing Segal wasn't all that much fun, as the only thing we really could really say was "pick up the damn phone, make a reservation, and go." Alas, it seems that not enough people did.

Actually, it is not entirely clear that Segal was done in solely by a lack of trade. Last weekend, we bumped into David Seboek of Baraka fame, who holds the lease to the space Segal (and Baraka) used to inhabit, and who had initially encouraged chef/proprietor (and former Baraka kitchen God) Victor Segal to set up his own shop. From what Seboek told us, it seems that Segal the chef lost interest in Segal the restaurant. Though we're sure there are at least two sides to this story.

Either way, it's a damn shame, even though we could only afford to eat at Segal once every year or so, or however long it was open.

UPDATE: The plot thickens...