Yo! Lobster, a seafood restaurant in Highland Park Village, will close on September 15, 2024, owner Nick Badovinus confirmed Dallas Morning News,
The restaurant will be closed on September 16, 17 and 18, 2024, and then open again on September 19, 2024 from 5 to 8 p.m. for a three-hour goodbye party — “a mini kegger,” Badovinus called it. All lobster rolls will be half price and the bar will sell wine, beer and the restaurant’s signature frozen Cape Cod cocktail made with vodka, cranberry and lemon.
Badovinus opened the restaurant in Highland Park on Election Day in November 2020. (He jokes: It was “the second biggest news of the day.”)
He said the idea behind the restaurant was to “divert your attention” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Americans were mostly staying home and restaurants were struggling.
,[We thought]If you can’t go to the East Coast, if you’re stuck close to home, let’s make something that’s really escapist.”
The restaurant sold five lobster rolls, an unheard of variety in landlocked Dallas. Instead of choosing butter or mayo, Yo! Lobster offered both and more: Connecticut, hot with butter; Maine, cold with mayo; Louisiana, hot with voodoo sauce; Texas, hot with bacon and fried lobster; and California, cold with avocado and pico.
When Yo!Lobster opened, it replaced another Badovinus restaurant, Perfect Union Pizza, which was open from 2018 until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Badovinus owns several restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth, including Neighborhood Services, steakhouse Town Hearth, seafood joint Montlake Cut, prime rib den Brass Ram and casual spot National Anthem.
Badovinus' downtown Dallas rooftop restaurant and bar, Surf Camp, will open for the season in late September 2024.
He also owned the Greenville Avenue patio bar Desert Racer, but it closed in the spring of 2024. That restaurant will become Chuy’s.
Badovinus did not say why Yo! Lobster closed. He said parts of the business “may come alive again in a different incarnation,” but did not elaborate.
“Restaurants are businesses. We are all driven by gravitational forces,” he said.
“And,” he added, “we have a lot of other things going on.” One of them: opening a restaurant in the place of the infamous Kings Cabaret strip club in the Dallas Design District.
Yo! Lobster was at 33B Highland Park Village, Dallas. It is closed except for a party on September 19, 2024 from 5 to 8 p.m.
For more food news, follow Sarah Blascovich at X @sblaskovich,