Dinner is over at The Good Food Emporium

Some bad news for fans of The Good Food Emporium's dinner menu: The kitchen's closed. About six months ago the 2179 Gottingen Street eatery decided to expand beyond its always-popular lunch hours to serve dinner Wednesday through Friday. The menu featured several Korean dishes, as well as Jamaican jerk tofu and Thai green curry---in all, a delicious departure from the Emporium's hearty comfort food ethic. But "departures" mean "extra work" in a small company. "The restaurant is busy during the day, and it started to strain our resources being open at night," says part-owner Eric Gunnells. Regular operations also got harder when Paul Rodgers, another partner, left the business.

Ultimately there wasn't enough dinner trade to justify the effort. The expanded hours have been suspended as of last week; Wednesday, May 5, was the first night without dinner, at least for a while. "We're waiting for traffic on the street to pick up again," says Gunnells. "Lots of developments are going on. There's supposed to be a bar opening across the road, I was really counting on that." With residential development happening up and down the street, not the least of which is a 100-unit building going into the MET space right next store to The Good Food, the long-promised Gottingen resurgence may finally be underway. Six months ago proved a little early for the ambitious dinner menu, but its time is…soon, promises Gunnells. "We will bring it back."