Cafe Brenda calling it quits

 Cafe Brenda has anchored the corner of 1st Av. N. and N. 3rd St. in the Minneapolis Warehouse District since 1986.

Cafe Brenda is calling it quits.

“Everything has its time,” said owner Brenda Langton. “I’m fine with it. We’ve had a great time. It’s been fun.”

The restaurant, a mostly vegetarian pioneer in the local-foods movement, opened in the Minneapolis Warehouse District in 1986. “Back then, the Warehouse District was really cool,” Langton said. “But those days are done.”

Langton cited the time contraints of running two restaurants — she launched Spoonriver, located across the street from the Guthrie Theater, in 2006 — as a main reason for the closure. “I’m having a great time moving into other arenas, and I just don’t have time for it all,” she said.

One such project is a Spoonriver cookbook, being published by the University of Minnesota Press. Langton also serves as a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality & Healing where she teaches a course on “Healthy Eating/Healthy Living.”

Langton opened her first restaurant, Cafe Kardamena, in St. Paul in 1978. Eight years later, after being inspired by Greens in San Francisco and Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., she decided it was time for a change. “I came back and said, ‘It’s time to move to the big city,’” she recalled. “The next weekend I was driving around, showing a friend from New York all over downtown. We saw a “For Lease” sign and I said, ‘Oh my god, this is it.’ We went in that Monday and started negotiating.”

A final closing date hasn’t been set, but Langton is thinking it might be Dec. 5th. Until then, she plans to be a fixture during lunch and dinner at the restaurant, so she can say goodbye to customers, and gently nudge them over to Spoonriver.

“I think I’ll be getting a lot of hugs in the next two weeks,” said Langton. “At least I hope so.”