Mikette, the French bistro on Plymouth with red trim and a Mediterranean-inspired menu, closed June 23. Owner Adam Baru announced the closing on Facebook and the restaurant’s website. Originally focused on dishes from the south of France, reflecting Baru’s love for the region’s seafood-focused cuisine, it underwent an extensive menu update last year that added Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Portuguese, and Spanish dishes.
“Covid was the ultimate backbreaker,” Baru says. “If we had another year to figure it out, we probably would have.” But with the pandemic, “the focus became very clear: we had to focus on what got us here,” his two downtown restaurants, Mani Osteria and Isalita, which share a building at the corner of E. Liberty and Division.
Closing Mikette “was a hard decision, but I’m sure it was the right decision,” Baru says. He’s updating the downtown restaurants’ operational procedures and training protocols and looking for ways to innovate.
He says he’s already convinced his landlord to let him transform a parking lot behind the building into outdoor seating for Isalita; Mani will inherit its current sidewalk seating on Liberty.