Wylie Bush now lives in the wild suburban rurals of Seattle and is raising a family. His Seattle cafe family will be changing.

Cafe Barjot will close at the end of the month to make way for a new restaurant project after seven years of business on Bellevue Ave E. Its palindromic older sibling Joe Bar will live and love on.

“As melancholy as I feel about closing Barjot I am as excited to write that the space will be reenergized by a new restaurant run by two wonderful people who will serve you food and drink that will quickly make Barjot a happy memory,” Bush announced over the weekend.

First-time food and drink owners and industry veterans Sara Moran and Paolo Gentile are taking over the space to open Finch and Pine later this spring. Moran most recently was part of the kitchen at Melrose’s Terra Plata while Gentile will bring deep wine and cocktail knowledge to the project.

Barjot was born in the summer of 2014 in the space created for Dani Cone’s cafe project Chico Madrid in the Belroy Apartments development. Many of its customers live within walking distance of its crepes and hot bowls of soup. CHS noted Barjot’s seven-minute downhill, eight-minute uphill, 0.2-mile distance from Joe Bar at the time — surely one of the world’s better work commutes.

While Bush’s commutes take him outside the city these days, he says he is grateful to still be in business on Capitol Hill at Joe Bar thanks to loyal customers — and a government program. “I am so grateful for the community socialist triple P,” Bush quipped about the PPP — Paycheck Protection Program — forgivable loans that have helped him keep the cafe. Though, for a small cafe like Joe Bar, Bush says business right now means simply staying open. “Even though we will surf through this, it is operating just to keep people employed,” Bush said. Numbers like that were part of the reason he says he decided to put Barjot up for sale in September.

In the meantime, Bush says he hopes customers who may not have been by in awhile will stop in to say hey before he closes on March 31st.

“I am so grateful to everyone who has come through our doors. You have made the last six years and especially this last year more than worthwhile,” Bush writes.

Finch and Pine is planned to open at 711 Bellevue Ave E before summer.

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