Filed under “So This Happened,” Power Plant Live’s seemingly flagship “maturation effort” restaurant Kettle Hill closed — good god — over two months ago already, in a very, very quiet manner when the doors simply closed, locked, this post from Baltimore Diner c/o G-Lick dropped and no one ever said another word on the matter. Open for a mere eight months I actually blew through on a Wednesday afternoon roughly halfway into its lifespan during a rather painful bout with Viral Hives (don’t ask) and sampled some of their drinks, and I thought the place was nice enough – maybe a bit expensive but that’s no different from any place else in PPL.
So with some positive buzz and a decent enough restaurant review, what could possibly go wrong? Image issues? Too rich for the customer’s blood?
Or, as an informed informant relayed, it may have been the lease terms for the massive restaurant space, cracking the $30,000 a month mark, not including any other overhead.
Before they could pay anyone on staff, or pay the electric bills, they’d have to sell two thousand, one hundred and forty two Church and States (pretax) to hit that mark.
KH was apparently so behind on rent the place needed to be shuttered immediately and all property was seized — including those awesome fancy ice-ball machines NOOOOOOO! But seriously, when 75% of what populates PPL includes a bar whose centerpiece is a stripper pole and a number of other establishments that embrace buttrock to its fullest, maybe Baltimore just wasn’t ready to get all semisophisticated up in Power Plant LIVE!
Even still, fun fact: Pretty sure Kettle Hill’s folding wasn’t as precipitous as the doomed Canton Arts and Entertainment (now Dark Horse Canton and the shuttered Finnegan’s Wake) back in early 2010, which by various accounts was roughly six months. Still not counting 1542 Gastropub’s 3 month turnover on this list because their closing was not seemingly due to financial woeliness.
Anyone else go to Kettle Hill? Thoughts? Could it have survived somewhere less …costly?
$30k a month? Jeebus! That’s plenty of Fireball, bruh!
I was wondering what the hell happened. It did seem a little to nice for Power Plant Live. And no more expensive than any other resturant in the city. It probably would have survived anywhere else.
We really liked it there but the location had to have been its downfall.
Thank you for the buttrock hyper-link. Very informative.
“One of these days, I’ll go” I kept telling myself. I was excited about it and had heard good things. Alas…
If they have any money left, maybe they could relocate to a place like McHenry Row. That would be a much better match.
I’ll leave my personal opinions regarding the rest of McHenry Row behind but swap out that Green Turtle for Kettle Hill any day of the week and it would improve the quality a hundred fold. Same thing for the new/newer/newest strip mall expansion out in Canton.
I liked that place, $1 oysters and some half-priced drinks at happy hour. They never should have opened in PPL.