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Highland Park restaurant to throw ‘a little kegger’ and close permanently

The seafood shop opened during the COVID-19 pandemic to feel like an escape from landlocked Dallas.

Yo! Lobster, a seafood restaurant in Highland Park Village, closed Sept. 15, 2024, owner Nick Badovinus confirmed to The Dallas Morning News.

The restaurant will remain closed Sept. 16, 17 and 18 and then open for a three-hour goodbye party — “a little kegger,” Badovinus called it — from 5 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 19. All lobster rolls will be half-price and the bar will sell wine, beer and the restaurant’s signature frozen Cape Cod cocktails made with vodka, cranberry and lime.

Badovinus opened the restaurant in Highland Park on Election Day in November 2020. (He jokes: It was “the second-biggest news of the day.”)

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The idea of the restaurant was to “take your mind somewhere else” during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Americans were largely staying home and restaurants were struggling.

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The Maine lobster roll at Yo! Lobster was served chilled, with mayo. The restaurant has...
The Maine lobster roll at Yo! Lobster was served chilled, with mayo. The restaurant has closed, but those who attend a "sea yo latah" party on Sept. 19, 2024 can buy lobster rolls half-price on its last night open.(Loren Means)

“[We thought], if you can’t get out to the East Coast, if you’re stuck closer to home, let’s create something that’s truly escapist.”

The restaurant sold five lobster rolls, an unheard-of variety in landlocked Dallas. Rather than pick butter or mayo, Yo! Lobster offered both, and more: Connecticut, warm, with butter; Maine, cold, with mayo; Louisiana, warm, with voodoo sauce; Texas, warm, with bacon and fried lobster; and California, cold, with avocado and pico.

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When Yo! Lobster opened, it replaced another Badovinus restaurant, Perfect Union Pizza, which was open from 2018 until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Badovinus owns a fleet of restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth that include Neighborhood Services, steakhouse Town Hearth, seafood joint Montlake Cut, prime rib den Brass Ram and casual spot National Anthem.

Badovinus’ downtown Dallas rooftop restaurant and bar, Surf Camp, opens for the season in late September 2024.

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He also owned Greenville Avenue patio bar Desert Racer, but it closed in spring 2024. That restaurant will become a Chuy’s.

Badovinus didn’t explain why Yo! Lobster closed. Parts of the business could “live again in a different incarnation,” he said, but he wouldn’t give details.

“Restaurants are businesses,” he said. “We’re all governed by forces of gravity.”

“And,” he added, “we have so many other things going on.” Among them: a restaurant replacing the infamous Kings Cabaret strip club in the Dallas Design District.

Yo! Lobster was at 33B Highland Park Village, Dallas. It’s closed, save for a party on Sept. 19, 2024 from 5-8 p.m.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on X at @sblaskovich.