Columbia ShopHouse To Shutter

COLUMBIA, MD — Less than three years after opening, ShopHouse will be closing for good at The Mall in Columbia. The build-your-own Asian dish restaurant will serve its last patrons at 10 p.m. on March 17.

ShopHouse has been part of the open-air plaza at the Columbia mall since August 2014.

Parent company Chipotle hoped to do for Asian food what it did for Mexican, but it didn't quite work out.

The company announced recently that it would shutter all 15 ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen restaurants by March 17.

ShopHouse was not able to generate enough sales to justify future investment, Chipotle said in its most recent annual report.

The fast-casual restaurant serves customizable noodle, rice and salad bowls with assorted toppings and tamarind, peanut, curry and chili sauces.

The restaurant’s name comes from the style of architecture in Southeast Asia where families live upstairs and operate restaurants downstairs, called “shophouses.”

The first Chipotle-owned ShopHouse opened in Dupont Circle in 2011. Since then, ShopHouse has expanded to other locations in the District of Columbia and a handful of states like Maryland, California and Illinois.

• Chipotle-Owned Asian Restaurant at Columbia Mall Opening Soon
• Mall in Columbia Says Open-Air Wing is Completely Leased

In the fall, Chipotle said that the company had "decided not to invest further in developing and growing the ShopHouse brand and will pursue strategic alternatives."

“We now have a deal in place to sell the ShopHouse leases and believe that is the right decision at this time,” Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Chipotle, told Nation’s Restaurant News more recently.

The Columbia ShopHouse will close at 10 p.m. on Friday, March 17, at The Mall in Columbia, 10300 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. Other Maryland locations are in Bethesda, North Bethesda and Silver Spring.

— By Cameron Luttrell and Elizabeth Janney.

Image via ShopHouse.