Spanish-Modernist Restaurant Ración Will Close May 30

Playful Spanish-modernist restaurant Ración will close May 30, after a little over two years in business.

Chef Anthony Cafiero's West End restaurant was sleek but not slick, wearing its molecular-gastronomy influences lightly on its sleeve, with tech-heavy food preparations emerging as bright, accessible juxtapositions of flavor and texture. The menu often had a dexterity that approached wit, as in a cold-poached albacore topped with the actual cold of strawberry sorbet. 

But the niche-crowd restaurant has struggled to fill its cavernous space—it's "more of a conference room" than a restaurant space, says Cafiero. He's now searching for smaller, more intimate environs on the east side of the river, with hopes of opening again this year.

"I've been trying to move since before the New Year," he says. "Our timing was supposed to be for a move while we were still open—we take a week off, and haul everything over." 

Instead, Ración now finds itself rootless. "We'll be doing odd jobs," Cafiero says of himself and his crew. "I'm going to take a break, and come back to it in a different light—go down to New Mexico and get my head on straight." 

He's considering a whole host of options for Ración's next step: making the menu more like an a la carte menu, recasting the place as a bar with innovative snacks, or even giving up his ownership stake to become just a chef again, after what he says has been an exhausting two years.

"My attitude is, that was a cool experience," says Cafiero. "Let's try this again with less stress and more money. We really pieced Ración together on a shoestring—blood, sweat and tears...I'm pretty damn proud of it. I made it longer than a lot of spots do, and I'm looking forward to seeing this entire summer foodwise, there's interesting stuff this year."

He pauses. "For every Renata that opens, a Ración must close.” 

WWeek 2015