The Shutter: Tinderbox Calls It Quits, Tries to Regroup
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

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Your regular dosage of restaurant and bar closings around town arrives via The Shutter. Notice a place that has recently closed its doors? Do share your sightings.

Bernal Heights: After less than a year open, Cortland Avenue's Tinderbox finally succumbed to the shutter over the weekend. Owners Ryan Russell and Blair Warsham say they are planning to reopen in August with a different concept, still under development:

The new restaurant, which will serve more as an artist's laboratory or workshop, will no longer open daily for service, but will be in business for reservations-only dinner events several times a week. Russell and Warsham will also expand the Tinderbox catering service.

Though we're fairly confused as to how a "workshop" will stay in business if a restaurant can't, we're definitely interested in how this story plays out. As for Tinderbox the restaurant, given its experimental/esoteric nature, out-of-the-way location (sorry Bernal Heights), child unfriendliness and desperate "burgers and pho" lunch promotions, it was only a matter of time before the 40-seat restaurant folded, talented as the personnel may have been.
· Eater Inside: Tinderbox [~ESF~]
· New Restaurateur Does Not Want Your Children's Business [~ESF~]

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