By Colin Young
After more than a decade of serving up some of the best Thai food in the city, Brown Sugar Cafe will close the doors to its Fenway location at the end of the month, according to the restaurant’s website.
The restaurant, located at 129 Jersey St., has been a staple for great food in the Fenway area for about 10 years and has earned several awards that hang on its walls for its fare, including the Boston Phoenix’s “Best Thai Food in the City” award in both 1998 and 2001. Other awards include Zagat Survey’s “Top Thai Cuisine,” “Top 40 Food Ranking” and “Top 40 Service Ranking” each year from 1998 through 2005.
The closing was announced in a statement on the restaurant’s website, as well as a posting on its door. The statement said it was a pleasure to serve its customers during the past 10 years, and that Brown Sugar Cafe will continue to offer its dishes and delivery service at its other location at 1033 Commonwealth Ave. The restaurant’s management could not be reached for comment on the closing of the Fenway location.
Some students said they were fond of the local restaurant and regretted hearing it will be closing.
“It was a really good place,” said sophomore pharmacy major Quinn Bott. “I would have liked to go there a lot more. It’s a shame that they’re closing because it seemed like a good date restaurant [but also] a good restaurant to take your parents to.”
Brown Sugar’s menu offers everything from the popular Thai spring roll to a house specialty Brown Sugar mango curry. In 2004 Zagat Survey praised Brown Sugar as having “a menu that may be bigger than nearby Fenway Park, there’s definitely something to please everyone.”
Bott said Brown Sugar had a lot of platters on its menu.
“There are good vegetarian and vegan options,” Bott said. “I got mango fried rice with vegan ham. I guess it was just made from tofu, but it was really good. It was sweet, but it still tasted a lot like ham. It was a good mix of flavors”.
Other students said the food is what kept them coming back.
“It was really good, some of the best Thai I’ve had,” said junior electrical engineering technology major Ian Helmuth. “The drunken noodle was my favorite dish.”
Bott also said the relatively inexpensive prices rounded out a great experience at the Brown Sugar Cafe.
“It’s reasonably priced too. It had all the makings of a good restaurant in my book,” he said.
The closing of the Brown Sugar Cafe came as a surprise to some students who said they had only heard good things about it.
“I would want to go there again but I guess that isn’t possible,” Helmuth said. “I find it pretty odd that they’re closing, everyone I know loves it.”
Brown Sugar Cafe opened in 1996 and added its second location, Brown Sugar Cafe II in 1999, according to the site.
