Owner Brendan Marsden announced today that Modesto Tapas Bar & Restaurant, a restaurant he owns with Julie Block Fernandez, located at 5257 Shaw (at Edwards), will close after 15 years on the Hill.
A release noted that a selection of favorite dishes will return to the menu before the restaurant closes on August 20. It also mentioned “special appearances, including guest bartenders…as the team prepares for the City’s original Spanish restaurant’s final weeks.”
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Besides the above claim, Modesto was the only restaurant in town that adhered to the true, Spanish style of tapas, i.e., offering one-bite tastes of sweets and savories at .50 to a few dollars apiece during Happy Hour. (In parts of Spain, toothpicks are used to keep track of what’s been consumed, with different priced tapas designated by different shapes or colors of toothpicks.) Modesto’s everyday menu offers traditional Spanish dishes and updated versions of classics, all priced from a $5 nibble to a massive plate of paella for $19.
Modesto was also the first restaurant on the Hill (that we can remember) that was not Italian, or that at least leaned that way. (We remember strongly—very strongly—advising Marsden against such a renegade decision. The Hill was protective and insular, and plunking a Spanish eatery in the middle of an Italian enclave would make opening a restaurant riskier than it already was.)
Turned out we were wrong.
Modesto was welcomed by Hill residents and the general public alike, many of whom were unfamiliar with the term, the tapas style of dining, and Spanish wines. (Our knowledge of sangria increased exponentially at Modesto.)
In the industry, fifteen good years is viewed as a decent run for a restaurant, but Marsden was not immediately available to elaborate on the closure.
Marsden (right) also owns Whitebox Eatery in Clayton; his brother Brian Vincent Marsden owns Vincent Van Doughnut, a food truck and Clayton doughnut shop, with a second location slated to open in the Grove in the fall.
The release teased that “management and staff signed on for a new restaurant concept in the same corner building,” and that “the reveal for the space was tentatively scheduled for September.”
UPDATE: August 1, 12:55 p.m.
When asked the reason for the closure, Marsden said “it was time,” and although the restaurant was still viable, it wasn’t generating the numbers it once was. The 41-year-old reflected that he opened the restaurant when he was 26, and added, “I’m grateful and lucky…if I knew then what I know now, it may never even have happened. But I wanted to end Modesto’s run on a high note and then put something both different and fun in its place,” referring to the new concept above.
Marsden said that at the end of September, his same team will reopen the space as a pizzeria, “with a unique take on pizza.” When we half-jokingly asked if it would be either Spanish or tapas-style, the answer was neither, only that additional details would be made available in the coming weeks.
