Living Kitchen will permanently close its SouthPark location on Saturday

Living Kitchen’s SouthPark location, open a little more than a year, will close its doors for good after business on Saturday.

The SouthPark location opened in the spring of last year in the space that was once occupied by Zebra Restaurant & Wine Bar. 

Stephen Edwards, Living Kitchen’s President, said a high-rent, hidden location on the backside of a building wasn’t a good fit for the vegan, plant-based restaurant. “We had high hopes for SouthPark. We had a lot of customers there,” he said. “We just never got to the volume we needed.”

Lunches at the SouthPark location drew a crowd, but they did not have enough dinner volume, Edwards said. “Everywhere we go, we have a core group of loyalists that are thrilled when we arrive. We have a niche business, so we have to go build a customer base that are people who are initially a little reluctant to try what we do. We do our best to succeed; we just weren’t getting there with SouthPark.”

In a Facebook live video around SouthPark’s one-year anniversary in May, owner Juliana Luna said, “I still haven’t seen a lot of faces that we see in South End, but we want to be sure that you guys know that we are open here.”

Katy LeGrand works at Camden Gallery and frequents Living Kitchen’s South End location. She’s not vegan or vegetarian — “I just really love that it’s a healthy option and it’s within walking distance of where I work,” she said.

LeGrand, who lives in SouthPark, only recently learned of the location so close to home. She said she was sorry to hear they were closing before she even got a chance to visit them there.

“The avocado basil sandwich is to die for. It’s so filling, but in a good way, not in a gross way,” she said.

Huntersville resident Paula Hall said she will miss making the trip down to Living Kitchen. “It was a really cute place overall, very modern and cozy. My boyfriend and I would go there and feel like we were tucked away in a secret spot in SouthPark,” she said.

Her favorite was a former menu item she called “Lox and Capers.” Hall said it was  “perfection,” claiming it was even better than the South End location. “They put it on this sourdough; tasted like an English muffin,” she said.

Living Kitchen’s menu is relatively new; Edwards said they unveiled it a couple of months ago. People like to try new things, and he said they also wanted a menu that might appeal to a broader audience. New items include a broccoli mushroom pizza, made with a raw buckwheat and flax seed crust, and bowls including a macrobiotic bowl with adzuki beans, quinoa, kale, roasted sweet potatoes, sauerkraut and lemon tahini sauce. 

“We have a long list of items in our repertoire. We will continue to rotate our menu more frequently than in the past,” Edwards said.

The restaurant’s SouthPark location was mostly empty late Thursday afternoon until diners began trickling in around 5:30 p.m. Several patrons were taking advantage of a mild August day on the patio, chatting in front of the unlit fireplace.

Luckily for its loyal customers, the South End location is just a few miles away in Atherton Mill. “We’re telling our regulars we hope to see them in South End. We’re doing very well over there,” Edwards said.  “We are grateful for the loyalty we have and we have a very close-knit group of customers.”

Luna’s Living Kitchen opened in South End in 2012. In 2015, the name was shortened. “Living Kitchen is more distinctive and more representative of what we were as a business,” Edwards said.

In addition to the Atherton Mill location, the company also has a spot in Raleigh and had one in Chapel Hill that closed in June.

Living Kitchen will continue to seek other locations in Charlotte, Edwards said.

This story was originally published August 24, 2018 at 2:01 AM.