Grapeseed, one of the shining stars of the SoHa neighborhood, closed after last night’s service.
Like Sam Kogos’ abrupt closure of Riverbend Restaurant & Bar five weeks ago, owner-chef Ben Anderson said he wanted to go out without a lot of tears and “we’ll miss yous.”
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Anderson said the nearly three-year-old restaurant “was successful and could have gone on,” but another food-service opportunity had materialized that would take him and his fiancée out of state.
“I was looking to regain a little bit of normality, which there isn’t much of in the restaurant business,” he said. “I’m going to get married soon. It was necessary to take my life in a different direction.”
He’s not the first chef to leave restaurant life in search of a less hectic lifestyle. “I didn’t have gray hair when I started Grapeseed,” he said, “but I do now.”
Anderson had purchased the building at 5400 Nottingham (at Macklind) and lived upstairs, which he called a blessing and a curse. “The good news is you were there all the time, in case something happened,” he said. “The bad news is you were there all the time.”
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Anderson worked for Bill Cardwell at Cardwell’s and before that, with Rob Uyemura, at Café Eau.
See Also: Kitchen Q&A: Grapeseed’s Ben Anderson
After its opening in mid-2014, Grapeseed enjoyed almost instant popular and critical success, due in part to Anderson’s chef-partner, Jon Olson, who also worked with him at Canoe in St. Charles and at Gist Bistro in Ballwin.
As to the future of the building, Anderson would only say, “I doubt that it will be vacant for too long.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated from an earlier version.
