The Edwardsville location of Robust (126 N. Main) will close after brunch service on Sunday, June 28. The other two locations (Webster Groves and downtown) will remain open. Stanley and Arlene Maminta Browne own all three of the wine bar/wine shop restaurants.
“It’s bittersweet and I’m heartbroken,” lamented Arlene Browne. “From the start, we were attracted to Edwardsville's sense of community and all the support they give their restaurants, so it will be difficult to leave all the friends we made there.”
The main reason for the closure, according to Browne, was the amount of time required to operate the location. “For Edwardsville to run properly, we found it both important and necessary to be onsite at all times,“ she said. “And with two other restaurants to run, it just wasn’t feasible.”
A better fit, she said, would be an owner-operator that could devote full attention to the business and to that end, the Brownes located an experienced, locally-based restaurateur who offered to buy the business. No other details were made available.
“Edwardsville is still my favorite location,” she added, “but sometimes you have to make hard decisions to be successful in other places. Opportunities arose that we just weren’t able to consider, and now we can.”
According to Kathie Opel, a civic booster and attorney with Weinheimer Law Firm in Edwardsville, the Brownes will be missed. “Even before Robust opened, the Brownes became involved with all our food-based, civic, and charitable events,” she said. “And no one supported the local chefs and the Edwardsville restaurant community better than Stanley and Arlene.”
