…but Koi looks like it’s not too far away as the replace­ment for Copita, with logos all over the awn­ing already. The food sounds quite inter­est­ing, but it will mainly be bar snacks, with the emphas­is a bit more on drink­ing than in its illus­tri­ous fine-din­ing pre­de­cessor.

As my col­leagues men­tioned, I’ve been busily tweet­ing away, but for those not fol­low­ing the tweets, here’s a sum­mary of recent news, gos­sip and spec­u­la­tion, plus a few oth­er morsels…

In an update from pre­vi­ous news, Club K may have closed to allow for Arty Bee’s expan­sion upstairs (a book­shop tak­ing over a bar? Heresy!), but it will take over the space just across the Oaks. You know, the one with a great repu­ta­tion for longev­ity.

The Dom­Post art­icle on Crazy Horse’s troubles was­n’t the first hint that $40+ steaks aren’t a great seller in this eco­nomy. There was a very thinly veiled post on Roar­prawn as early as last Decem­ber sug­gest­ing fron­ti­er justice in the hospo world, with stra­tegic dine ‘n’ dashes planned in advance by dis­gruntled cred­it­ors. And the sign on their door today? Appar­ently they “will not be open­ing tonight due to tech­nic­al dif­fi­culties.” Hmmm.

But the down­turn isn’t just hit­ting the top end of the mar­ket: cafes and takeaways are also feel­ing the squeeze. Rice­bur­ger, Fresh Take and that old stal­wart Dorothy’s Patis­ser­ie have all shut their doors. Fresh Take may be gone from Chews Lane, but appar­ently their Les Mills branch in Tarana­ki St will be mov­ing to street level. No sign of a future life though for Dorothy’s, which sur­vived fire but could­n’t live through increas­ing Cuba St rents (hav­ing a really good French patis­ser­ie mov­ing in up the street can­’t have helped either).