Downtown Evanston Thai Restaurant Cozy Noodles & Rice To Permanently Close

EVANSTON, IL — Cozy Noodles & Rice, the popular downtown Evanston Thai restaurant filled with vintage Americana, is set to close at the end of June after 23 years in business.

Co-owners Bee Nanakorn and Yee Muenprasittiveg hope to be able to open somewhere else in Evanston if they can find a suitable location.

The news was shared by a customer on social media earlier this and first reported Monday by the Evanston RoundTable.

Citing rising rent as the primary reason for the closure, Nanakorn told the RoundTable much of the the restaurant's eclectic memorabilia collection would be available for sale after the restaurant vacates the storefront 1018 Davis St.

The building's owner declined to confirm or deny whether it was set to be sold, the RoundTable reported. The neighboring storefront at 1016 Davis St. has been vacant since the closure of Bottle & Bottega in March 2019.

Two years after Cozy opened in Evanston in 2001, Suppaluk "Tee Cozy" Meunprasittiveg, the younger brother of the Evanston owner, opened Cozy Noodles n'Rice at 3456 N. Sheffield Ave. in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood.

The Chicago eatery is also brightly decorated with kitschy artifacts of American culture, though it naturally has more of a baseball theme to it.