The longtime McCormick & Schmick’s at Town & Country Village in west Houston has gone dark, leaving what used to be a packed steak-and-seafood dining room sitting empty, its trademark signs stripped from the facade. Shoppers and nearby residents spotted the bare windows this week, and the spot has quietly disappeared from some local reservation platforms.
According to Chron, the Town & Country Village location is no longer operating and the address at 791 Town and Country Blvd. has been removed from McCormick & Schmick’s online location listings. The outlet reports that the restaurant’s signage came down after the lease changed hands.
In a statement to Chron, McCormick & Schmick’s COO Shah Ghani said the company sold the lease and assets to a new ownership group and confirmed the restaurant officially closed on Friday, March 27. Ghani thanked “our loyal guests” and said the chain is working to move staff to nearby sister locations rather than leaving them without options.
From expansion to contraction
The Town & Country outpost opened in 2010 as part of McCormick & Schmick’s west-side growth push, according to CultureMap Houston. The brand itself dates back to the 1970s and was acquired by Landry’s Inc. in 2012, per Wikipedia, a turning point that sits within a longer run of ownership changes and a footprint that has steadily shrunk over the past decade.
What remains in Houston
McCormick & Schmick’s official site now lists two Houston locations: a downtown GreenStreet restaurant at 1201 Fannin St. and an Uptown Park spot at 1151 Uptown Park Blvd. The brand’s locations page shows its local presence focused in the downtown and Galleria corridors, and diners searching for reservations in Houston will still find those two entries on the chain’s site.
Why this matters
Restaurant industry watchers say full-service steakhouses have been feeling the pinch from weaker weekday traffic and shifting corporate dining habits, pressures that tend to hit older, higher-rent locations first. Coverage of McCormick & Schmick’s recent retrenchment puts the Town & Country closure in that larger story of a brand trimming back on underperforming or lease-heavy sites, a trend TheStreet has explored in detail…