Tazé Mediterranean Street Food (626 Washington and 8 ½ S. Euclid) has closed its doors at both its downtown and Central West End locations. Co-owner Casey Roth, who runs the business with twin brother Justin Roth, cites “an extraordinarily slow summer” as a reason for the closures. The last day of business at both locations was October 14. The Post-Dispatch‘s Ian Froeb was first to sound the alarm.
For the brothers, Tazé was the result of a longtime passion for the Mediterranean. Before opening the restaurant, SLM noted in a recent street food feature, “Justin visited London, Spain, Turkey, Africa, New York, and Tokyo to experience an array of street foods. His favorite stop: the city of Marrakech in Morocco. Justin and consulting chef Matt Borchardt connected with a street food-savvy dragoman. ‘He took us outside the city walls, where the locals lived,’ Justin recalls. ‘We saw whole goat skewered on poles and cooked in 12-foot-tall clay ovens. We ate our most memorable meal, a spiced beef, at tables and chairs in a media on a dusty highway.’”
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Tazé at the Mercantile Exchange in 2015. Customers could choose between a pita or a bowl with saffron rice and then add a protein from the tandoor, gyro from the spit, or falafel or portabella mushrooms. Patrons could then add cucumber, olives, feta, or tomato and top it all off with a sauce, along with a side and hummus.
At first, customers were slow to grasp the concept of “build-your-own” as it applied to somewhat unfamiliar Mediterranean street foods, Casey admits. “There was a learning curve there, for sure, but we had slowly but steadily been building the downtown business,” he says.
So in 2017, buoyed by the growth and interest, they added a second location in the former Tortillaria Mexican Kitchen space in the Central West End. “Casey says he expects the clientele here to be slightly different from downtown, where the lunchtime traffic is heavy,” SLM noted at the time. “In the CWE, he anticipates a later crowd and is planning a full liquor program of beer, wine, sangria, and frozen drinks.”
“The growth wasn’t as pronounced,” he says today, “but it was there.”
Then summer hit.
“It was a rough summer,” says Casey. ‘We never saw it coming. Then fall arrived, we knew we’d be heading in the wrong direction for many months, and decided to cut the cord.
“Tazé really was our dream restaurant,” he adds, “but we’ll rebound.”
