After barely a year in business, Marcello’s Wine Bar and Café in the Southdowns Shopping Center is closing.
Owner Gene Todaro, who brought his popular restaurant back to Baton Rouge in 2018, six years after closing it the first time, says he is shutting down again because he underestimated the demands of running three restaurants in three cities.
Marcello’s also has locations in New Orleans and Lafayette.
“Our Lafayette location is very busy and my father is wanting to slow down,” Todaro says. “I’ve been running over there twice a week and need to go more often. I can’t properly develop the Baton Rouge location with my eye on Lafayette and New Orleans.”
Todaro says Marcello’s was doing well at the Southdowns location but that the restaurant still needed another year or so to mature as a concept and that he didn’t have the time to devote to it.
Though he cannot discuss it yet, a new restaurant concept will be taking over the Marcello’s location, which was renovated heavily before Todaro moved in last year. Landlord Donnie Jarreau says the new restaurant group will either assume Marcello’s lease or sublease the location from him.
“We’re very pleased with what’s going on,” Jarreau says. “It’s going to be a good story.”
Marcello’s opened the first time in the Southdowns Shopping Center in 2009 in the space long occupied by neighborhood watering hole, Southdowns Lounge. Following its 2012 closure, a string of short-lived restaurants occupied the space, including Romacelli, Portico, and Table Kitchen and Bar.
In early 2017, Phil’s Oyster Bar owners Jordan and Anthony Piazza decided to lease the space for a second restaurant in the shopping center but later changed their mind.
Jarreau says he is optimistic the new group has staying power.
“It’s going to be positive for the neighborhood,” he says.
