Karloff Closing—But Only For a Week

restaurant, located at Court Street between Butler and Kane Streets, has big changes on the horizon. First and foremost: to shut down operations as of the last week in April.

But not to worry—they plan to reopen a week later. The dormant period will be spent transforming both the menu and the interior space into a more trend-driven, comfort-food friendly and hip destination.

"We are going to renovate and the menu is doing a 360," said Chef Vince Visceglia sitting at one of the long wooden farm tables currently occupying the space. "Right now we're considered predominantly a Russian restaurant. Well, we're going to keep and the blintzes, but I'm going to take it from Eastern Europe to Latin America in a wide-ranging tapas menu. We're going to cover the gamut."

To give a more complete sense of the vast culinary expansion, Visceglia said there will be everything from vegan/vegetarian dishes to mac 'n' cheese spring rolls to a revamped brunch menu, featuring house-baked pastries and complimentary biscotti on the tables.

Gone will be the ice cream case, replaced by a bar with tapped beer. 

"I'll still have the ice cream, but I'll probably make something new like ice cream sandwiches," said Visceglia. The catch-all theme, he said, is traditional with a twist.

"It's going to be international," explained owner Olga Patop, "a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a place where you can bring your date or your friends."

The new evolution of Karloff is also going to be open later—12:00 a.m. on weeknights and 1:00 a.m. on the weekends.

"There is a lot of competition out there," added Visceglio. "So we need to differentiate ourselves."

"We just want to make it cooler, nicer," Patop summed up. "It's the next step."

The restaurant will stop serving lunch next week, and be completely shutting down April 30. When they reopen, Karloff plans to resume dinner service and brunch moving forward. Stay tuned.