Grecian Gourmet Taverna will be closing its South Main Street restaurant on November 1st. 23. The restaurant owner made the announcement Tuesday in a social media post.
“I want to start by saying that we love Southern Maine and downtown Memphis, and no area or community has the soul and support we have in downtown,” Colleen Knight said in the post. “This restaurant has been our second home since we signed the lease in December 2017 and we have made a very difficult decision and regret not resigning for another five years.”
Knight cited the impact of COVID-19 on everyone, especially small businesses that depend on local business lunches and tourism for survival, neither of which has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
“We’re tired. We’re rebuilding really hard, but we have to take stock of the lives and time we’ve spent in restaurants and decide it’s time to focus on how we started — and make it better,” Knight said. “My husband and I have two young kids — they’ll never be 6 and 2 again — but we can open another restaurant someday.”
But don’t worry: Grecian Gourmet’s retail food line is still available.
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The Cavaliers are shifting their focus to growing the retail and dining aspects of their business, transitioning from Grecian Gourmet Taverna to a new space in Bartlett called Grecian Gourmet Kitchen.
Grecian Gourmet currently has a retail line of more than a dozen items, from appetizers like hummus and pita to entrees like spanakopita.
Greek food is currently available at SuperLo (Spottswood store), High Point Grocery, Cordelia’s Market, Buster’s Liquors, Curb Market, Cash Saver (Madison Avenue location), South Point Grocery, Grind City Grocery, Curbside Casserole and Katy’s Kitchen ( Germantown).
“While the shutdown is bittersweet, retail and dining are a big part of what we do and how we get started,” Knight said. “I’m thrilled to have gone far beyond anything we could have imagined when we started this journey seven years ago.”
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The Grecian Gourmet was launched in 2016 by Corrine Knight’s parents Jeff Watkins and JoBeth Graves. Knight and her husband Cal have been involved in the business from the start and will officially take over in January 2022. The company started selling Greek food at the Memphis Farmers Market and expanded to other stores and markets in 2017. In December 2017, they signed a lease to open the Downtown restaurant.
Knight said she wanted the transition between the dining room and the new kitchen to be seamless. “We hope to move into the new space in October, and our lease in the city centre runs through December,” she said. “So our retail offerings and food and beverage operations are not going to stop.”
Plans for the new kitchen location include the eventual opening of a retail store.
Jennifer Chandler is a food and beverage reporter for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at jennifer.chandler@commercialappeal.com and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @cookwjennifer.