…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).