After 37 years, Carmelo’s will close for good on December 25, after serving its final Christmas Day Buffet Brunch. The Memorial-area restaurant, known for its Tower of Pisa salad, veal and seafood offerings and tableside Caesar and fettuccine carbonara, sent an email to friends that was then forwarded along to the Houston Press.
In the email, owner Carmelo Maura thanked his guests for dining at the restaurant, which first opened in 1981. In 1995 the restaurant, located in a former swimming pool factory, underwent a major revamp to look like a stylized piazza. Maura thanked his staff as well, noting :
Our culinary team and wait staff were just youngsters when we started back then and now they are awesome professionals and family men and women… We’ve seen them grow up, become who they wanted to be and raise a second generation of greatness. We’re so grateful and honored to have been witnesses of their stories and we’re sure they’ll do even greater things.
According to Eater Houston, the 32-year-old Austin location of Carmelo’s also shuttered earlier this year, possibly because of rising property values.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2017.
