Omnivore - Buford Highway Sichuan restaurant Gu's Bistro has closed

• Yvonne Gu Khan

Chef/owner Yiquan Gu's popular Buford Highway Sichuan restaurant Gu's Bistro has closed. The restaurant, which first opened in December 2010, announced the news Friday morning. According to the Facebook post, however, owners hope to find a new location and say they plan to reopen the Bistro in the future.

In the meantime, the Gu family is preparing to open Gu's Dumplings, an abbreviated, dumpling-and-street-food-centric version of Gu's Bistro in Krog Street Market. Although the Inman Park food stall's launch has experienced delays (the Gu family had planned to open back in February), Gu's Dumplings "is set to open in the middle of March."

Spearheading the effort to get Gu's Dumplings up and running is Yiquan Gu's daughter Yvonne Gu Khan. Khan was named among Creative Loafing's 20 People to Watch in 2015. Here's an excerpt from that CL feature, which ran back in January:

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The 600-foot-stall has just enough room for limited kitchen equipment and an ordering counter. To maintain quality, the Gu crew will make all the sauces and dumplings daily on Buford Highway, then transport them to Krog Street.

In addition to the Bistro's signature pork dumplings, Gu's Dumplings will have chicken- and vegetable-filled varieties, too. There will be other Gu's favorites such as Chengdu cold noodles and kung pao lotus root. Cups of french fry-like dry fried eggplant and perhaps even rotating specials from chef Gu himself will round out Gu's Dumplings' 15-or-so-item menu.

A departure from the Bistro, however, will be the stall's retail component. Khan says they plan to sell spice packs filled with things like citron peppercorns, and portions of Gu's proprietary dumpling sauce bottled in-house. Khan hopes to have Gu's Dumplings up and running by early spring. And, depending on the stall's success, this could be the first step toward a full-fledged Gu's Bistro location intown.

"I think we are really excited because this is a new concept to Downtown people, and us too. We kind of want to know if in the future there is a chance we're going to move to Downtown and how people there are going to react to authentic Sichuan foods."

Here's the restaurant's full announcement:

We have permanently closed our Buford Highway location, so in the mean time, please visit our Gu's Dumplings location (www.gusdumplings.com, @gusdumplings, fb.com/gusdumplingsatl) at Krog Street Market in Inman Park, set to open in the middle of March. We are looking for a new location for Gu's Bistro to continue to provide the BEST Chinese experience in Atlanta! Feel free to check the website for updates, and be sure to follow us on Twitter (@gusbistro) and Facebook (fb.com/gusbistroatl). Of course, you can always email us at gusbistro at gmail.com. This is not the end, it is the beginning of something even better! Thanks for your continued support! Source: Facebook