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Passion Food Hospitality partners Jeff Tunks, Gus DiMillo, and David Wizenberg feel their Latin-inspired restaurant Ceiba has “run its course.” The downtown establishment will close Sept. 27 after 11 years in business.
“The time has come,” says DiMillo, whose restaurants include District Commons, Fuego Cocina y Tequileria, Acadiana, and others. “Everything’s made to open and then eventually things end. I’m not going to wait for somebody to tell me when it’s done. I always like to go out on a high note.”
With the lease running out, DiMillo adds that he and his partners wanted to “focus and condense our concepts more.” The group opened Penn Commons, a spin-off of District Commons, in Chinatown last month and are working to open a second PassionFish in Bethesda early next year.
But this doesn’t mean Ceiba is completely dead. DiMillo says some of the recipes may resurface at the group’s other restaurants, just like they did with TenPenh, which they closed in 2011.
“If we feel there’s a climate for another Ceiba-type restaurant, we may do it down the road,” DiMillo says. “But it’s not in the foreseeable future.”
Photo by Scott Suchman courtesy Passion Food Hospitality