Nick’s Italian Cafe, the McMinnville restaurant credited with helping launch Oregon’s wine tourism industry, has closed permanently, just six months shy of what would have been its 50th anniversary. The closure comes after a failed safety inspection revealed a kitchen ventilation hood so far out of code that fixing it wasn’t financially viable for the ownership group that had only reopened the restaurant two years earlier.
The restaurant announced its closure on social media, thanking patrons and the McMinnville community, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive. In late June, a safety inspection found the restaurant’s ventilation hood was non-compliant, per the News-Register, prompting an initial temporary suspension of operations while the aging equipment was assessed. Owner Scott Baldwin told Eater PDX that reconstructing the kitchen could cost upwards of $100,000, and he said the potential expense simply did not make financial sense to pursue.
By the end of July, the ownership group made the closure permanent. The new ownership group did not respond to messages requesting information about the decision, per the same OregonLive report.
A Revival That Lasted Just Two Years
Nick’s had only been open again since July 2024, when restaurateurs Thomas Ghinazzi, Jordan Neale, Scott Baldwin and Aaron Nieman took over the historic space and attempted to revive it. Ghinazzi, the head chef, retired long-standing signature items like the Peirano family’s minestrone soup and Dungeness crab lasagna in favor of a modernized menu built around dishes such as Tuscan ribollita, according to the Oregon Wine Press. The trio behind the reboot had previously run Earth & Sea restaurant in nearby Carlton, which closed at the end of 2024 even as they kept Nick’s running…