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Pampas Argentine Gastropub to Close as Ché O'Bryonville Expands

Pampas will host its last night of service this Saturday.

Oct 2, 2023 at 3:57 pm

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Photo: Hailey Bollinger

Pampas Argentine Gastropub

An O’Bryonville restaurant will serve its final meal Saturday as another neighborhood eatery plans to move in.

Ignite Entertainment announced Monday that it’s closing Pampas Argentine Gastropub in order to expand another one of its restaurants, Ché O’Bryonville, into that location. The former Ché O’Bryonville will then transform into Nuestra Cocina, which will be used for Ché’s catering and as a test kitchen, commissary and tasting room where it can host wine and spirit dinners and experience, says Ignite owner Juan Imeroni.

“We brought the Ché brand to O’Bryonville from Over-the-Rhine with its more affordable and concise menu — and we created Pampas, a concept to explore a more authentic and elaborated Argentine menu with higher-level food and drink offerings — to date, what works best has been proven,” Imeroni said in a press release, adding Pampas also has a larger dining room, an expansive bar and private event space that could better serve Ché. “We love being a part of the growing neighborhood here in O’Bryonville, and we are thrilled that we’ll have a larger space for Ché.”

Imeroni says when Ché reopens, the menus at both the O’Bryonville location and their Over-the-Rhine restaurant will feature some of Pampas’ most popular dishes. These include the Parrillada Experience, a shareable, grilled meats platter and the Choripan sandwich, a traditional Argentine favorite with chorizo sausage, topped with salsa criolla and served on a hearty bun. The menu will also have a traditional Argentine pizza, the Fugazetta, with mozzarella-stuffed crust, onions, oregano and more mozzarella.

Pampas and the original Ché O’Bryonille will host their last nights of service on Saturday, Oct. 7. Both locations will be closed the following day as the transitions begin. Ignite plans to reopen Ché on Tuesday, Oct. 17. The restaurant will maintain operations seven days a week, with weekday specials and Saturday and Sunday brunch.

Imeroni says the staff from both locations have been offered a position with either Ché O’Bryonville or at another one of Ignite’s 15 restaurant concepts.

Pampas Argentine Gastropub (soon to be Ché O’Bryonville), 2038 Madison Road, O’Bryonville.
Ché OBV (soon to be Nuestra Cocina), 3008 O’Bryon St., O’Bryonville.
Ché OTR, 1342 Walnut St., Over-the-Rhine

More info: ignitefam.com.

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...