Well, that lasted a month. @jseattle pic.twitter.com/9yzvjzhwjj

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley) May 7, 2019

Usually when CHS hears about a sad passing in the Capitol Hill food and drink economy, we try to check in to find out more about what was behind the closing. The story isn’t usually a surprise. Slow business. Redevelopment. Life changes.

But we don’t have much more to add than some fancy words to the tweets about the end of Summit Ave’s A La Vida.

It’s true. The newly hatched restaurant from the chrysalis of the former Itto’s Tapas never really took flight, lasting about a month next to neighbors the Summit Pub and Sol Liquor, where a recent ownership change seems to have worked out much more smoothly.

Messages to new owner Jody Claggett have gone unanswered. The former Itto’s manager talked with CHS in February about making the leap into ownership after a few years behind the bar and leaving a tech career behind. The A La Vida name was inspired by a customer who turned him onto new music and a song about the joy of life. “Everybody that I meet, it’s just a great conversation,” Claggett told CHS at the time.

A check of the usual records and permits reveals no further information on the closure.

The small Summit Ave restaurant space has been going through a series of transitions. In late 2017, CHS wrote about the transformation of Summit pizza joint Toscana to match longtime owner Khalid Agour’s original Itto’s Tapas in West Seattle. Agour had operated a restaurant in the Summit space since 1999. The original Itto’s continues on California Ave SW.

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.