One of this year’s most promising new restaurants has closed, but its chefs have a new concept planned for the space. Café Louieannounced that it has closed and will become a new Italian restaurant called Louie’s Italian American.

Opened in May by chef Angelo Emiliani and his sister, pastry chef Lucianna Emiliani, Café Louie offered a Mediterranean-influenced take on the all-day cafe. Mornings featured pastries by Lucianna with savory items such as breakfast sandwiches. Chef Angelo served a more elevated dinner menu built around bistro classics such as shrimp cocktail, roast chicken, and freshly made pastas.

The closing comes as a surprise, particularly given the restaurant’s brief tenure. During its short history, it drew considerable praise, including a top 25 ranking in theChronicle’s list of Houston’s 100 best restaurants.

In a lengthy statement provided by a representative, Angelo Emiliani explains that the restaurant struggled to balance its fast casual breakfast and lunch service with its full service dinner offering. “The economics of a morning restaurant and a dinner restaurant are also very different, and Café Louie became financially unsustainable once we shifted to dinner,” he writes.

As for the pivot to Italian American food, it grew out of the Sunday night dinner specials the restaurant has been serving for a couple of months. Dubbed “Red Sauce Sundays,” the prix fixe menu included dishes such as Caesar salad, wagyu meatballs, rigatoni, and chicken parmesan. As Emiliani notes, the offering proved to be a hit, drawing more diners on Sunday nights than would visit the restaurant on Friday or Saturday.

“We poured our hearts into Café Louie and wanted nothing more than to see it succeed, but we also must be pragmatic by giving the people what they clearly want,” he writes.

Currently, the East End restaurant is closed for renovations designed to suit its new mission as an Italian restaurant. When it reopens later this month, it will be open for dinner Thursday-Sunday.