It's (Shit)Hammer Time

​The shithammer continues to fall on local restaurants.  

At CityPlace, the revolving door keeps spinning with the departure of Bar Louie, a somewhat unwieldy blend of pub, sports bar, and midscale café with a menu that offered something for everyone but hardly anyone bothered to sample. That leaves the BL in Boynton's goliath Renaissance Commons complex as the chain's lone local outpost, though the couple of times Charlie stuck his head inside, it didn't seem as if the world were beating a path to its door either.  

As for CityPlace itself, it recently gained Carousel Can Can Café (which Charlie reported on last week), while construction of the coming B.B. King Blues Club in the old Legal Sea Foods site continues apace. McCormick & Schmick's is supposed to make its CityPlace debut "soon" too, but Charlie advises it's probably not a good idea to hold your breath.

The other restaurant nail that just got hammered belongs to Café Joley in Boca. It had a pretty decent run under chef/partner John Suley, who brought to the hoity mall-and-chained town the kind of smart, sophisticated, gastronomically ambitious chef O&O restaurant that real restaurant towns like NYC, SF, LA, Chicago, and more have by the bushel.

Suley left the restaurant some time ago, tried his hand at opening a Joley in SoBe's version of the Bermuda Triangle (Hotel Astor), and at last word was chef de cuisine at Alfred Portale's Gotham Steak in the lawsuit-bedecked Fontainebleau on Collins Avenue. RIP.