🚀 go-pugleaf

I ask: how can a restaurant slide so quickly, so utterly, into
oblivion? Not just any restaurant, but one blessed with location!
location! location! and countless reviews that had, not too long ago,
pegged it as among the city's best?

The demise of Rouge is apparent to anyone driving past or stopping in
for a quickie; last week, I dropped in for lunch at 12:30 and found to
my astonishment zero patrons. Zero. The surrounding restaurants are
abuzz with life: Indika, Dolce Vita, Osaka, Da Marco, Ruggles, Niko's,
BabaYaga, Katz's, La Fendee and Aladdin. Even the unremarkable Italian
restaurant across from Dolce Vita benefits from area overflow business
and waiting lines. But Rouge remains deserted and eerily silent.

That great and tired alchemist, Aldo, (formerly of, where else?
Aldo's!) can't breathe any life into the location, after the real
French chef departed for Central Market, and the French GM fled for
Gadsby's Noe in the Omni Hotel.

So, what is the fate of this place? Maybe Tillman is watching, aware
of a new opportunity? Or a redo is lurking around the bend?