• madeleine bistro announces closure on facebook

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    April 29th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, madeleine bistro

    UPDATE 5/6/11: due to vegans going psycho, madeleine bistro has decided to move their closing day until may 22nd! take advantage, people. they are only open 3 days a week for 2 more weeks. make it count.

    well, this is quite distressing. madeleine bistro, our favorite vegan restaurant in all the land, took to their facebook page at 3am to announce their closure. say it ain’t so!

    in a note titled “madeleine bistro closing details”, they wrote…

    “Just want to let everyone know that the official date for our closure has finally been set. Our last day of regular business as Madeleine Bistro in Tarzana will be Mother’s Day — Sunday May 8th — so if you need a fix please visit soon. Beginning Monday May 9th we will be offering extended home delivery services (bistro box plus some new services as well) and will continue our catering and some exciting special events too (cooking classes, tasting menu nights & more) so stay tuned for those details… Thank you all for your support over the last six years and we look forward to continue serving you in the future.”

    this is awful news, and right now i can only hope they reverse their decision and remain open. i’m glad they are continuing to do the bistro box and tasting menus, but the vegan world just won’t be the same without their sunday brunches or weekend dinners. i am so sad. madeleine bistro has threatened closure before, let’s hope they don’t go through with it.

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41 responses to “madeleine bistro announces closure on facebook” RSS icon

  • Shit – i just went for the first time last week.

  • Dang. 🙁 I really liked that place when we visited. So sad right now.

  • Dammit. While I’ve not been more than once (it’s a little out of my price range), it is a FANTASTIC place and there will be a hole in my heart if they do actually close.

  • I really like the food there (who wouldn’t?), but they priced themselves right out of business. I mean, how much did they charge for the price fixe meals on New Year’s and Valentine’s Day? Something like $150 a PERSON? That is unacceptable for a vegan meal, no matter how good it is!

  • It certainly is.

  • that tasting menu was expensive, but i think their normal food is reasonably priced for the quality. best i’ve ever had!

  • Gauri Radha गौरी राधा

    Too bad to hear this. I hope they re-open in future at some point.

  • Great food, good service. I bit pricey, but the food is amazingly prepared. Not the best location, If you’re going to have a trendy vegan restaurant in the valley you need to be east of the 405, otherwise Hollywood is the way to go.
    I’m sure the rent was cheap, but with barely a sign out front and little to no advertising, this is not surprising. Still a bummer!

  • I actually might have been the one to goad QuarryGirl (via email) into finally trying Madeleine’s in the first place… I used to love this restaurant, but it’s been dead to me for over a year. Outstanding food at times, but insultingly high prices that only got higher as time went by, plus barely awake waitstaff and bland ambiance. A $100+ meal for two (not including drinks!) should have service and atmosphere to match, but Madeleine’s dropped the ball big time. Too bad, they had great potential.

  • I mean Madeleine, not Madeleine’s. 🙂

  • I for one am sooooo sad! There is no other vegan restaurant in the LA area that is NICE. Being from the east coast, I would like to have an elegant place to celebrate a special event. As for the price……there a sooooooo many places in LA that se mired expensive and no one bats an eye, because they are in the mainstream meat eating class of establishments. Their food is amazing, they are all vegan and I am so disappointed that we are losing them.

  • Just to reiterate……price for an elegant, amazing food that is vegan in an area that prefers sandals and jeans……is something that everyone should remember as a special place with food that can’t be matched.

  • Have you heard, by chance, if they will be open during the day on the last 2 Saturday’s?

  • location, location, location.

  • Very sad news indeed. Totally agree about comments about location – I never go because it’s so far, but I think about them all the time.

  • This news makes me very sad. I love their brunch, but it was so far away that I didn’t go as often as I would have liked.

  • i would be there all the time if it wasn’t such a drive for me.

    bummer.

  • Very sad indeed 🙁

  • No! 🙁 If they hadn’t been so far away I would’ve gone more often. I’m really bummed about this news.

  • Brick & Mortar ain’t easy nowadays, no matter what industry.

  • i just read a comment they left on their own post that they are planning a grand re-opening! maybe all is not lost?

  • I thought they were moving to Eagle Rock? Still true? Or does this mean they are completely closing down with NO future locations? Sorry to be confused. I do love their food but we can only afford to go once a year or so on our budget.

  • They just announced that due to overwhelming response/short notice, they are extending their weekend hours through May 22. Great news!

  • Giant. Frowny. Face. Sigh…

  • OMG NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!! I won’t be able to go, I’m out of town. I was SO excited to go for my birthday in June. This is TERRIBLE news. I didn’t see their FB post. This BLOWS.

  • Really too bad, but without the support of vegans they have to rely on the locals, and they really weren’t able to reach out and touch the non-vegan community in that area. I had faith the new Whole Foods in Tarzana would help neighborhood people discover them. And it still might, but maybe they just don’t have the luxury of time.

    It’s frustrating to hear “location” as an excuse. It’s not hard for Westsiders to get to Tarzana on a weekend. It takes me 15-20 minutes to get from Sherman Oaks to Santa Monica, big fucking deal.

  • P.S. It is also mega annoying that vegans keep going to omni restaurants that have a handful of “vegan options” when our all-vegan restaurants are going out of business. Yes you might have to drive an extra five or ten minutes to go to a vegan restaurant. Yes it might cost you five dollars more. Oh well. That’s what you do to support your vegan community – while you still have one.

  • And, on the flip side, if people don’t reward the omni places for having vegan options, they may decide that no one wants vegan food anymore, and stop offering them.

    Besides, do you know how many vegans I ever go out to eat with? That would be ZERO. I’m glad that I have a HUGE array of places I can go where they offer both vegan and non-vegan offerings.

    Besides, I’m not going to always go for the all vegan place if the omni place is superior. I mean, who in their right mind would choose Real Food Daily over the right next door Chili Addiction?!? 😉

  • Someone who doesn’t support animal exploitation? Someone who wants to support vegans?

    I don’t care about the omni restaurants making money from vegans, sorry. According to the new COK booklet we have 35 vegan restaurants. If your friends don’t find any of them to their liking, I suspect they’re the ones with the problem! 🙂

  • I’m not interested in being the pain in the ass vegan who demands that everyone I know (including people who are more than friends, such as my husband or my elderly parents) caters to my diet and only goes to vegan restaurants with me. Do people in my life go to vegan places with me sometimes? Well, of course they do! But is it really reasonable for me to put the constraint on everyone that I know that they need to limit our social time to only vegan places? I don’t think so. I’m glad there are so many restaurant options where a mixed group can dine together. I would hate to end up as a ghetto-ized vegan that could only dine in 35 restaurants out of the thousands of options people have in LA. I’m ok with trying to function in normal society… and better yet, doing my part to make vegans less “fringe” and more accepted amongst “normal” people.

  • RandomGirl, you’re arguing with someone who gets booklets from vegan lobbyists in Washington. I wouldn’t even bother.

    And I agree, it’s akin to giving up your humanity to be a complete wackjob that no one likes. Enjoy only interacting with other vegans (except when you’re yelling at omnis in front of fast food restaurants), Su.

    To quote The Simpsons: You don’t win friends with salad.

  • Too bad! I always thought that they should fix their sign because it never looked like the business was open.

  • It’s comparable or cheaper than high end omni restaurants, but without all the death and stuff. Maybe vegans are just cheap.

  • Gregalor, I think you have me confused with someone else.

    Honestly it’s not such an extreme position to expect ethical vegans to support vegan businesses. To bring this back to the point – if we don’t support them, they go bye-bye.

  • I think vegans aren’t as used to “fancy” restaurants as most people are, because we simply don’t get many (or any) opportunities to go to them. Most high end restaurants impress people by putting meat in everything, and that’s all it takes.

  • Meredith, Gregalator… You both get a big “huh?” from me. My vegan wife and I LOVE going to special occasion restaurants on, y’know, special occasions. And we get it: “Special occasion” means at least $50-75 per person. (More if you’re drinking.) When Madeleine Bistro opened, we were THRILLED that there was finally an all-vegan “nice place” to go to. And for the first 2-3 years it WAS nice, with professional servers and a convivial atmosphere. But it got worse and worse even as the prices got higher and higher. The final time we went, last year, our waiter was untrained and incompetent – he gave us dreadful service even only with 1 other table that night. (Madeleine becoming a ghost town also gave us less reason to schlep out to Tarzana.) Y’all might be willing to pay $150 for two in exchange for lousy service and an unwelcoming atmosphere… but where I come from, an expensive dinner out should be an experience. The real issue is not that vegans can’t “appreciate” fancy restaurants, but that restaurateurs need to deliver stellar service and ambiance if they’re going to charge stellar prices.

  • I’m generalizing. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know personally about Madeleine Bistro.

  • NOOOOOOO I had just today planned to go there for my 18th birthday! This sucks!

  • M is closing, as is Pure Luck, yet on the VegNews debacle most people maintained that there are more than enough vegans/vegan resources to keep a strictly vegan business going…

    Guess not. Too bad, I liked both of those places.

  • I think they’re just closing for remodeling! No need to panic. Molly clarified in the comments on her Facebook post about the closure.

  • I just came across another “vegan/vegetarian recipes and restaurant reviews” blog (not as good as QG’s blog, lol) and there was something about Madeleine Bistro:

    http://sickofeatingsidedishes.wordpress.com/

    Madeleine Bistro-Bistro Box
    By Nicole Wirtz

    For all that do not know, Madeleine Bistro will be closing their restaurant this weekend. Madeleine Bistro has been the top vegan restaurant in LA since 2005. I am so sad that this restaurant is closing because it is honestly the most amazing vegan cuisine I have ever tasted. There are rumors that they will re-open after renovations but nothing has been confirmed! I guess we all have to wait and see. If you love Madeleine Bistro like myself or have not had a chance to try it they are still doing their delivery Bistro Box. The Bistro Box is a weeks worth of food that is delivered to your door or you can pick it up at their Tarzana location. A single serving is $125 and a serving for 2 people is $150. If you are new to veganism its a great way to start, I know how overwhelming cooking vegan cuisine can be so why not have someone else do it for you. I highly recommend placing an order to try out the delicious food.


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