Austin’s Wilder Wood restaurant, owned by Joan Griffith, will be closing permanently on Monday, Sept. 18, after 22 years in business – first as Wild Wood Bakehouse in UT’s North Campus area, then (in 2017) as Wilder Wood Restaurant and Bar at 1300 E. Seventh.
[Note: The Chronicle’s Food editor Melanie Haupt covered the shutdown of the original location in 2019, and now we’re sad to relate this latest news.]
“We were able to survive the pandemic and the great freeze,” said Joan Griffith via the GoFundMe started to help raise money to support the restaurant’s staff. “But this last year, we’ve been barely able to stay afloat.”
“A restaurant from NYC has already agreed to take over the lease,” said Griffith. “Austin is changing drastically, and survival for small restaurants in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood without the backing of a multimillion dollar restaurant group is becoming more impossible. It is heartbreaking that we must say goodbye and so abruptly, but unfortunately, that is just the hand we’ve been dealt.”
If you’d like to bid the excellent eatery and its stalwart team farewell, citizen, there’ll be a Goodbye Party on Sunday, Sept. 17.
This article appears in The 33rd Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.