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Downtown Cincinnati Korean Restaurant Haru Closes

The restaurant is listed as permanently closed on its social media and Google, and their website was taken offline.

Aug 29, 2023 at 10:36 am

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Photo: facebook.com/HaruKoreanRestaurant

HARU

A downtown Cincinnati Korean restaurant has permanently closed its doors.

Haru, which was located at 628 Vine St., is now listed as permanently closed on Google and the restaurant's social media. Its website was also taken offline. The only announcement came in the form of a sign in the restaurant's window, but no reason was given.

Haru opened in downtown in 2017 and was best known for serving up Korean dishes like ban chan (small bowls of appetizers like kimchi and fried sweet potatoes) and a wide variety of entrees such as kimchi fried rice, sweet potato noodles (jap chae), vegetarian-friendly tofu dishes and bibimbop.

It joins the list of recent closures in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, including Copper & Flame in Over-the-Rhine and Keystone Bar & Grill in Covington, both of which will have their last days on Saturday. Covington's Korean-inspired pub Chimaek also closed this month, but its owners say they're working on a new concept.

Slideshow

15 Greater Cincinnati Restaurants That Closed So Far This Year

PearlStarNashville restaurateur Terry Raley permanently closed this popular oyster spot in Over-the-Rhine without warning in February and deleted its social media. PearlStar opened in the fall of 2021 in the former A Tavola storefront on Vine Street. The restaurant, highly anticipated at the time, offered both East and West Coast oysters and other raw delicacies such as crudo, ceviche and tartare. The kitchen also featured a wood-burning grill to create (non-raw) burgers and steak sandwiches, and the menu included items for vegans and vegetarians. "We didn’t want to do just seafood; we really wanted it to be a place where you can have something for everyone," culinary and operations director Leroy Ansley said before opening. But Cincinnati oyster lovers can celebrate because a new oyster spot is opening up in PearlStar’s place; veteran restaurateurs and owners of The Pony and Liberty’s Bar & Bottle Garth Lieb and Tom Stephen signed a lease with 3CDC for the spot in May.

RoyceLike its sister restaurant PearlStar, Royce was shuttered suddenly in February by Raley. He had launched Royce in August 2022, just a mile south of PearlStar, inside 3CDC’s $51-million development The Foundry in Fountain Square. With Raley dubbing it a "modern French brasserie," Royce offered a French-leaning menu and featured a raw bar. Thunderdome Restaurant Group recently signed a lease for the space and says it's planning an American-style brasserie, with a polished atmosphere and a seasonally changing menu drawing inspiration from rustic dishes from Italy, France and the U.S.

Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger JointJack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint, part of a larger chain that began in Harrisonburg, Virginia, closed its Over-the-Rhine location, the only one in Ohio, suddenly in late April. The chain didn’t give a reason for the closure, only writing “Permanently closed April 23, 2023. Thanks for the memories!!!!” on the webpage for the Cincinnati location. The closest location you can grab one of their signature burgers or deep-fried Oreos now is in Lexington.

Spoon: Kitchen & MarketSpoon: Kitchen & Market was a neighborhood bistro, cafe and grocery shop in Covington that placed a heavy focus on sustainability, fresh ingredients that were in season and locally sourced and community. It closed in March, with the restaurant saying the world had changed too much since it first opened its doors in 2019 to continue its mission to provide local foods rooted in sustainability. “We would like to thank everyone that has made this journey possible. Along the way we’ve made an abundance of new friends and been a part of countless special moments in the Mainstrasse community,” the restaurant wrote on its website. “Thank you again to everyone that believed and supported us along the way.”

Qlicious Bubble Tea & Pastries (Liberty Township)Mason’s Queens Bakery also owns Qlicious in Over-the-Rhine and owned another location at Liberty Center until the beginning of June. The bubble tea and pastry spot posted to Facebook on May 31 about the closure, saying they received an email the day before that their lease was being terminated and that Liberty Center signed another tenant to the space. Queens Bakery said they had been working with Liberty Center since January to renew a long-term release. “Nobody even ever told us once or asked us once if we want to stay then just signed to somebody else,” the bakery wrote.

KhoraOnce lauded by Food & Wine and Vogue as one of the “most anticipated” restaurants opening in 2020, the Kinley Hotel restaurant Khora closed for good in April after the hotel’s general manager told CityBeat just weeks before that it wanted to move in a different direction. Before it opened, Khora received national attention due to its staffing dream team that included chefs Kevin Ashworth and Edward Lee, pastry chef Megan Ketover and general manager Blair Bowman. It was even on track to be named by Esquire as one of the nation’s best new restaurants that year, but that fell apart after the hotel’s corporate owners fired Ashworth and Lee, followed shortly by the departure of Ketover and Bowman late in 2021. Khora closed temporarily in 2021 then quietly reopened the next year. And while the original iteration of Khora focused on pastas made from unusual grains, the new menu had shifted focus away from that.

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About The Author

Katherine Barrier

Katherine Barrier is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s journalism program and has nearly 10 years of experience reporting local and national news as a digital journalist. At CityBeat, she oversees the digital and social media strategies, edits web and print content and writes for the dining and arts...