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I’m sad to announce that Handke’s Cuisine will be closing it’s doors on Saturday, June 20th after 18 years of operation. The award-winning restaurant was opened in 1991 by nationally-recognized Chef Hartmut Handke, and was sold last year to T & L Cuisine.
Columbus Underground is still hosting a happy hour event tomorrow at Encore, located in the adjacent bar area of the restaurant. Come on out and join us for a final hurrah.
Is Encore closing with it? Sad that the new ownership could not keep it going.
This is very disappointing to hear. Having dinner at Handke’s was on our top 5 restaurant to-do list. We may have to move it up.
oh shoot :( I’ve never been there!! Guess I’ll have to go soon!
This is very sad. One of my best meals/nights in Columbus was an excellent dinner at Handke’s and great service. Check it out if you haven’t – there is a time left.
It’s a shame Handke’s in closing – it’s well known even outside of Columbus. I never had an experience good enough to match the price, though. Maybe that dankness can be aired out and soon enough, another restaurant can go in.
Great food. Sad to see it go. Even fewer places in the Brewery District now. :(
I’ve always heard it is one of those “expensive but worth it” places. Sad that it takes them closing for me to finally try it. Great, that makes me an accomplice to their having to close.
That’s a good point I was just thinking about Jefe…. what is the deal down there? There was so much hope and promise then, blah. Probably another thread altogether but what is the missing link in Brewery district??
^ Breweries.
I think it went downhill after Major Woody’s closed, that was the one bar that tied it all together.
(jk)
CBC is still down there but there’s been no visible brewery since Hoster’s shut down seven years ago.
One brewery does not a Brewery District make.
I admit the last two times I went were for prix-fixe dinners on Thanksgiving (excellent and worth every penny) and Valentine’s Day (good but not great). The prices and the atmosphere made Handke’s a special-occasion restaurant rather than a place we’d consider for dinner on a semi-regular basis. Now that I give their website another look, it appears they offer the same type of prix-fixe menu that keeps us going to the Refectory as our go-to place for bargain fancypants dining. Had I known about that sooner, I’m sure we would’ve saved ourselves some of the drives up 315 and gone with Handke’s instead.
Sad to see this place go as it did give the B District some notariaty, but honestly the one time I ate there I wasn’t too impressed. I got a steak and thought it was somewhat bland and the meat tough. Side of asparagus had a bad texture also. Maybe I just had an abnormally bad experience but there are plenty of other great places to eat in the Brewery District and hopefully something new and interesting will take the place of Handke’s.
Really sad to see this go, had many great meals there over the years.
cbradkee, my highly unscientific hypothesis would be that the Arena District is what happened to the Brewery District. As the former grew, the latter lost out. Relatively similar venues. I don’t pretend to be an authority on it though.
Man this is sad. I love Handke’s, this is a very big loss for the BD. It will be hard to replace such a high profile place.
Jefe Says: cbradkee, my highly unscientific hypothesis would be that the Arena District is what happened to the Brewery District. As the former grew, the latter lost out. Relatively similar venues. I don’t pretend to be an authority on it though.
(I’m not an authority on this topic either, but I’ll give this a shot based on my recollection of various tidbits of info gathered over the years…)
In more recent years, yes… the Arena District combined with the influx of nightlife venues to the Park Street area sucked all of the nightlife out of the Brewery District pretty quickly. In the late 90s and early 2000s the BD was home to a dozen bars located within a block or two of each other.
But historically, I believe that prohibition killed off a lot of the actual Brewery business that took place in the neighborhood. The area lost the Breweries long before the name “Brewery District” was established. So it’s always been more of a name giving to the historic nature of the area rather than an identifier of what you can find there.
Similarly, only a small fraction of the meat-packing businesses are still around in the Meat Packing District in NYC. ;)
This is really sad news. All my best to the Handke’s crew. Hope there are jobs out there for their very talented staff.