West Seattle restaurants: Duos’ lounge closing, catering continuing

Two years after opening its restaurant/lounge at 2940 SW Avalon Way in the Luna Park business district, Duos announced today that it’s closing that part of its business, while continuing with catering:

Thank you for all the support and love you have shown to us here at the restaurant. We value the relationships we have built with you and we will truly miss seeing you. Our last day open will be December 20th, 2014 – Our two year anniversary.

The restaurant has become such a growing success for us and we were getting busier every day! It is such a great feeling to have a loyal support base and it made our decision that much more difficult. Unfortunately, we share this building with our catering department which has also grown substantially over these past two years. As a result, providing quality food for both the restaurant and catering has proven to be difficult and space has become limited.

Our business growth has been a blessing for us and it pains us to know the outcome of Duos’ success means closing the restaurant. We will still have an active role in the community and continue to support and donate to the wonderful schools and organizations in the area. We will remain in this building, producing our great catered food and we will keep the space open as an event venue. We will be holding events at the space offering special menus, date nights, cooking classes, and fun wine maker dinners!

This was an industrial and then retail space until five years ago; Café Revo was the first restaurant there, in 2009-2010, followed by Avalon for a year, early 2011 to early 2012, and then Duos, which opened its lounge/restaurant in fall 2012.

25 Replies to "West Seattle restaurants: Duos' lounge closing, catering continuing"

  • Kim December 15, 2014 (2:59 pm)

    Ahhh bummer, and we were just thinking we needed to stop by for a treat soon. I look forward to checking out the special events, especially cooking classes.

  • sam-c December 15, 2014 (3:02 pm)

    I wonder why they don’t at least stay open until the groupons they issued expire. (don’t worry I know the WSB stance on Groupons)
    I will miss Duos. Husband and I had a nice date night there – very tasty food.

    • WSB December 15, 2014 (3:09 pm)

      Sam – They did have a mention in the full announcement (which they tweeted and I believe Facebooked) that if you have a gift card, “We will
      happily reimburse the gift card amount or you can use the amount towards any catering orders.” Don’t know what that means for Gr*upon-type things.

  • Kristina December 15, 2014 (3:04 pm)

    Oh man! Duos catered our wedding this summer, and we were so excited to be able to eat our delicious wedding food whenever we wanted by visiting the restaurant. Sad to hear that we won’t be able to do that anymore…however, super excited for their catering business. We really enjoyed working with them and loved the food! Glad this closure is due to success, not lack thereof.

  • WestSea Girl December 15, 2014 (4:50 pm)

    Makes perfect business sense and I am excited about that. However, your restaurant will be missed by me ;) One of my favorites for sure.

  • Nancy Folsom December 15, 2014 (6:07 pm)

    Does this mean the building will be used for the catering, or that the business is closing and moving, so that there might be another restaurant opening in the space? It would be nice to have a neighborhood dinner spot.

    • WSB December 15, 2014 (7:04 pm)

      Nancy – they’re staying and focusing on catering – they were caterers before they opened the lounge/restaurant – although they did add in a p.s. in the note to us that they might try a restaurant again in the future – TR

  • laeti December 15, 2014 (6:49 pm)

    that might explain the service we got last week, our first time there, and probably one of the worst experience I ever had with a server. We would have never been back, so won’t miss it for sure!

  • shed22 December 15, 2014 (7:07 pm)

    Ah, man! A shame, I often enjoyed your awesome happy hour. I will miss frequenting the space, indoors and out.

  • sam-c December 15, 2014 (7:31 pm)

    laeti- good to know. I will make sure I have a book with me when I go later this week. (had plans to go the week between Christmas and NY, but obviously that won’t work anymore). can’t afford to throw $25 down the toilet and everyone is already so busy this week!

  • Brooke December 15, 2014 (9:23 pm)

    Oh so sad. Duos is my go to place! Best happy hour menu the most amazing Moscow Mule!!!!!

  • Laurie December 15, 2014 (9:47 pm)

    Robert and I will miss you all sooooo much. Will be in for one last order of the best ever corn dogs! Wishing you much success.

  • w.s.maverick December 16, 2014 (5:56 am)

    great food, rude service. its for the best

  • Nz December 16, 2014 (7:08 am)

    Nooooooo!

  • Mel December 16, 2014 (7:59 am)

    In the “things are not necessarily as claimed” department, the Duos lounge had recently been running a Groupon deal (actually, it’s still running, I got an email offer today), which usually indicates that lounge traffic was not as brisk the proprietor had hoped.
    .
    There was an earlier indication when brunch was scaled back to Sundays only a while ago (a shame – someone needs to address the issue of only one overcrowded breakfast spot in that neighborhood).
    .
    I completely get that their catering business is much more lucrative than the lounge, but I also think it’s likely the restaurant just wasn’t doing the business they’d hoped for.

  • Add December 16, 2014 (8:43 am)

    Such a bummer!! We love that place and have recommended it to others many times. Glad to hear of their success but disappointed that one of our favorite places is closing. Not sure I have time to squeeze in one last visit!!

  • AG December 16, 2014 (9:03 am)

    DAMN! This is our favorite spot for date night. They’re WONDERFUL people, and the staff is beyond fantastic. I have two groupons for Sunday brunch. Guess I’ll have to take hubs out to dinner one night this week and hope they’ll honor paid-value on them both at once. Pooh.

  • Ben - Duos December 16, 2014 (1:20 pm)

    I am going to miss having the lounge full of amazing people! We have talk to group-on and they do allow a full refund if you are not able to get in a redeem your voucher. Everyone’s voucher expires at a different time so there was no easy way to plan that out.
    I’m sorry for the customer who had a bad experience with a server. Your situation was unique.
    Josh and I never thought the Lounge would be as successful as it is/was. The calls and comments we are receiving have been over welling.
    Mel- Our brunch was never scaled back, due to busy catering Saturday’s didn’t have space in our kitchen to provide a Saturday brunch. We hoped to expand our Lounge hours after catering moved out of the space but plans and business models change. If anyone has any questions on there coupon vouchers feel free to give us a call. We would love to see everyone one last time! We are going to try and get the Triangle Jazz-tet as much as possible!

  • Eric December 16, 2014 (5:50 pm)

    Consistently unprofessional service since they opened. Knew it was coming, despite the reasons they stated. Not that sad about this.

  • Drums December 16, 2014 (7:21 pm)

    WSB, it would be neat to run a 2014 look back article to all the businesses that closed and opened this year. It’s been very active and the blog is a good tool to archive the changes. :)

  • Kari December 16, 2014 (10:38 pm)

    This makes me so sad! We loved Duos! In fact, we couldn’t get a table on Saturday because they had an hour wait, so ots hard to believe they had to close! I guess we’ll be going in for our last poutine fix before the 20th.

  • Andrea December 17, 2014 (12:30 pm)

    So sad about this! We have many family memories at this venue not to mention the owners are amazing! To juggle a successful catering business and an equally successful restaurant had to be challenging. Much respect to you for making the tough decision. I look forward to the events mentioned in the letter. We will continue to support Duo’s however we can.

  • Wes C. Addle December 17, 2014 (1:33 pm)

    Duos was always middle of the road to me. Good food, nice folks, bad execution.
    .
    Everytime I’ve ever gone there the entrees always came one by one and was never consistent. It would always end up with someone finishing their meal before someone at the table would get served. Best of luck to the catering though.

  • denise December 17, 2014 (7:44 pm)

    Sorry, about all of this. What is it about this location. We need more restaurant’s in the hood. We had dinner there one time. It was ok. Not amazing by any means. A good restaurant is a good resturant. You can’t pretend.

  • Kari December 26, 2014 (6:30 am)

    So very sad to hear this… We’ve never had a bad experience at Duos. Food was great and so was the service. I hope one day – the restaurant will re-open. Good luck Josh & Ben.

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