Popular Coral Gables restaurant closes after a decade
The Local Craft Food & Drink on Giralda Avenue was ahead of its time
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The Local Craft Food & Drink in Coral Gables is closing on June 19. (Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.)
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – For South Florida restaurant connoisseurs (especially those who have lived in the area long enough to remember a time when Wynwood had only one restaurant), “The Local,” which opened on Giralda Avenue back in 2011, was an exciting addition to the culinary scene.
With a name like The Local: Craft Food & Drink, newly formed craft beer-lovers and gourmet corn bread-enthusiasts alike swarmed to the little gem nestled on 150 Giralda Avenue in Coral Gables.
Candace Krebs
The Ag Journal
When Todd Olander and his wife, Emily, opened the doors of their new malt house in August 2016, they expected the product to fly out the door.
Instead, it took several months of pounding the pavement to sell the first 2,000 pounds as the couple attempted to convince craft brewers across the northern Front Range to give them a try.
“We thought we’d made a big mistake,” Olander recalled recently.
But after they hired a full-time salesman with a background in brewing, the tide turned.
“In 2017, we were able to pay our bills, so that was a success for us,” Olander said.
Photograph Courtesy of Nicole Glawson
Coveted for its resemblance to a dragon, California spiny lobster is a lucky dish for Lunar New Year and is also served at weddings and large get-togethers. Covid-19 crashed those parties in late 2019 and throughout 2020. Spiny lobster prices crashed too. It started with rumors, said Pete Halmay, seasoned urchin diver and president of San Diego Fishermen’s Working Group. At seventy-something, he’s still out getting salty almost every day. Two or three months before spiny lobster season was set to open in early October, Halmay said, talk on the docks was that Asia wasn’t buying this year, demand was way down due to covid-19, and the price San Diego fishermen would get for spiny lobster would be 30-50 percent of the norm. In a typical year, 95 percent of spiny lobster caught in San Diego goes to overseas markets, primarily Asia.