COVID casualty: A Lexington restaurant open 48 years is gone. Details on what’s next.
A downtown Lexington restaurant, in business for almost 50 years, has closed.
But this isn’t the end of the journey because the owners are looking to bring back the historic dining spot in a new form next year.
Alfalfa Restaurant, which has been at 141 E. Main St. since 2004, officially closed its doors at the end of October, said co-owners Tiffany Bellfield El-Amin and her husband, Wali El-Amin.
A popular fixture for weekend brunch and for college students dating back to the days of hippies, Alfalfa served a varied menu that included vegetarian food as well as local meats.
Shortages of labor and supplies brought on during the COVID pandemic led them to the decision to close, Tiffany El-Amin said. They plan to bring the Alfalfa brand back in 2022 as a food truck and event venue in a new location, she said.
“Labor and COVID were the biggest things,” she said. “Labor and shortages … We can’t do this alone. But there is a model we CAN do alone.”
The city was recently notified by the owners of Alfalfa’s Restaurant of their intent to cease business operations at the East Main Street location, according to Susan Straub, spokeswoman for Mayor Linda Gorton’s office. “We have not decided on a future use for the space yet.”
The storefront, which is right across from the police headquarters and down the block from City Hall, was emptied of tables and chairs and most fixtures.
COVID, downtown violence impacted restaurant
El-Amin said that at the end of summer things changed, particularly as school-aged children had to quarantine.
“We had a great summer but when COVID started to rise, we started to lose our labor. And when school started, lot of staff are single moms who had to call in,” she said. Then menu items began to be unavailable at shortages of supplies and price increases began to impact restaurants.
They also heard from customers that the uptick in violence in downtown Lexington was a factor keeping evening crowds away.
“It just got to where downtown wasn’t where people wanted us to be,” she said.
The final straw was when Tiffany came down with pneumonia in August and then tested positive for COVID. So they have “paused” their business for the winter, she said.
Next spring they hope to resume doing pop-ups as Alfalfa at festivals and events with a food truck while they look for a new home.
“Everything is going to stay Alfalfa-branded,” she said. “Alfalfa and its culture and its people are what we invested in and we want to keep that going around local people and local food.
“We can have a better impact than sitting in a downtown restaurant.”
Alfalfa Restaurant history
The restaurant opened on April 8, 1973, at 557 S. Limestone, and on opening day giving away a free meal to anyone who contributed a chair.
In 1974 the staff included cook Susan Saxe, who was later identified as one of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives for a 1970 bank robbery in which a Boston police officer was killed. Saxe was arrested elsewhere in 1975. Late Urban County council member Jake Gibbs was an off-and-on minority owner who started at Alfalfa washing dishes as a UK graduate student in 1979.
The restaurant became a favorite for its bohemian atmosphere, serving Hoppin’ John, buckwheat pancakes, Red Zinger herbal tea and cinnamon coffee across from the University of Kentucky campus for more than 40 years before moving to Main Street in 2004.
There the restaurant found new life next door to the city’s Downtown Arts Center but went through several ownership changes in the last few years.
It had been rescued once in 2016 by Bourbon ‘n’ Toulouse owners Cameron and Kevin Heathcoat, who sold it in 2018 to Amy and Jeb Messer, who also own Lynagh’s, and Joe McGinley, then manager of Cosmic Charlie’s.
Then as the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020 and Lexington restaurants shut down, Alfalfa announced it probably would not be coming back. The El-Amins saw that as an opportunity and reopened Alfalfa in August of last year with an emphasis on including Kentucky Proud and local Black farm products.
