Kansas City River Market Restaurant Gentrification: Café Al Dente Closing



Sign of the times and a local classic closing thanks to continued irrational exuberance, a speculative downtown real estate game and the toy train streetcar FAILING to deliver on promises . . .

Fox4: Owner of River Market restaurant says as area is about to boom, he’s being pushed out

Deets:

After 17 years of serving pizza and Italian food the owner of a beloved restaurant in the River Market said he is being kicked out of his building by new ownership. Café Al Dente will close its doors this weekend. The new building owner, who is a Denver-based developer, said he is not kicking the restaurant out, but chose not to renew its lease.

“You know we saw the vision a long time ago, and now that River Market is about to boom I am being pushed out,” said Eric Dwyer, the owner of Café Al Dente.

You decide . . .

Comments

  1. not to renew its lease

    Is the same as kicking someone out

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  2. Had to stop going to this place, I can microwave frozen food that tastes better than what they serve.

    Don't know what will replace them, but it won't be difficult for it to be an improvement.

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  3. Yeah, sad to say, the food at Cafe Al Dente was shit. And at Winslow's the service was even shittier.

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  4. It's capitalism.

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  5. 7:35---Marie Callenders frozen stuff is pretty good so is Stouffers

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  6. I used to like going to the River Market.

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  7. Saw this on 4 last night. These one-sided sob stories always leave me wondering: what's the other side? He has a "hugely successful business", "well established name", etc., etc. but he's not going to reopen elsewhere? Hmmm. Methinks business wasn't as booming as the story implied. I'd suspect he had a lease agreement with the previous Owner that was WAAAYYYY out of scale with current market. New Owner said "here's the new deal and rent" and he declined, then promptly threw the new Owner under the bus blaming them for all his ills.

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  8. The city better close down Winslows before the boom or its BBQ reputation is going to go down the shitter.

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  9. I never ate there.

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  10. We loved this place, but when Mom and Dad retired he took some of the favorites off of the menu and made the portion size smaller. Made us sad, but predicted they would not last.

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  11. Winslow's has sucked since 1997. Can't belive they are still in bis. Anyone who has eaten there and thinks its ok, eats dogs hit on a regular basis. That's about 20% of KC population.

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  12. We ate dinner there when his parents ran it. I can't believe you can ruin Italian pasta with meat sauce, but they did. Not only was the food served cold, we encountered a really strange attitude from the server. We are older white folks who don't cause any trouble. We tip well and we can't figure out why they treated us like the skunk at the picnic. We never went back because we felt so unwelcome. Hope they get a good restaurant in there next time.

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  13. The only BOOM in the River Market is the sound of the bottom falling out of the business there.

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