Trailblazing Midtown Restaurant to Shutter — Ibiza Prepares for its Goodbye

A trailblazing Midtown restaurant is shuttering, and wine lovers will be particularly hit hard by this closure.

Word of the impending closure doesn’t come through the grapevine, but from the daring duo behind Ibiza Food & Wine Bar themselves. Chef Charles Clark and Grant Cooper of Clark Cooper Concepts revealed today that Ibiza will hold its last dinner service on February 15, 2020.

This decision wasn’t so much due to any struggle as more of a wine not? The lease for the 19-year-old restaurant is up soon, and Clark and Cooper decided to shift their focus to their myriad of other restaurants rather than renew.

Ibiza ushered in an all-new era of Midtown. The Mediterranean hotspot  earned rave reviews for its affordably priced, extensive wine selection as soon as it launched. With pricetags just slightly above retail — a true rarity on the restaurant scene— Ibiza was a winner.

Ibiza’s success, with its 500-bottle wine list and bevy of tasty tapas, allowed for Clark Cooper Concepts’ growth into Brasserie 19, Coppa Osteria, Punk’s Simple Southern Food and The Dunlavy. The latter is destined for brand new dinner service as a full-blown restaurant at the start of next year, so it’s no surprise it’ll keep the pair busy.

“Since 2001, we’ve made it a point to create a vibe and experience at Ibiza that has kept our customers coming back,” Cooper says in a statement. “We have regulars that eat with us at the same table. We’ve seen our customers have families and their kids have kids.

“We’ve created a family at Ibiza with our employees and guests. We’ve made it a point to interact with our guests, give them good food that we would want to eat, show them our favorite wines at reasonable prices and they’ve kept coming back.”

“We had the concept of Ibiza in our heads for years. We wanted to create a restaurant where we could drink great wine, eat really good food, and enjoy the experience without spending a fortune,”  Clark adds. “After I came back from working in Marbella, Spain, Grant and I knew it was time to open our own concept and so Ibiza came to life and we were the first to ‘re-invent’ Midtown.

“It is hard to see a restaurant you’ve worked in everyday close, but we just did not see ourselves in this space for the next 5 to 10 years. We are still on a wait daily, but we see this evolution as an opportunity for our customers to frequent our other restaurants more often and for us to evolve our focus and concepts and allow for continued growth of our group of restaurants.”

Ibiza may be gone, but its Midtown legacy lives on.