Another longtime Houston restaurant will soon serve its last meal. Bosscat Kitchen & Libations will close after service on Sunday, September 28, owner John “JT” Reed tells CultureMap.
Open since February 2017 in a prime location near River Oaks District, the California-based restaurant quickly earned a following for its Southern-inspired comfort food, lavish brunch, and an expansive whiskey selection that it featured in a separate room with the space. The restaurant’s success led to a second location in The Woodlands that opened in 2023 and will remain open after the River Oaks outpost has closed.
As Reed explains, the restaurant’s revenue had been on a slow but steady decline for two years. With its lease expiring at the end of the year, he and his partners in Daily Dose Hospitality made the painful decision to shutter in September, allowing the restaurant’s staff — the group who aren’t moving to positions at either Ten Sushi + Cocktail Bar, the company’s pan-Asian concept that’s located across the street from Bosscat, or in The Woodlands — time to secure new jobs during the critical holiday season of October, November, and December.
“People’s incomes are spread a little thin,” Reed says. “If they used to come two times per week, now they only come one. If they used to come every weekend, now they come every other. It was just enough of a decline that we had to evaluate if it was the right move at the right time [to renew the lease].”
Despite the decision to close this location of Bosscat, Reed expresses optimism about Daily Dose’s future in Houston. He’s interested in a new location for Bosscat in the River Oaks/Galleria area — ideally in a space about half the size as Bosscat’s current 7,000 square feet — as well as opportunities in places like Katy and the Energy Corridor.
“We’ll spend the next six to eight months looking for somewhere in the general vicinity to migrate to, but there’s nothing really available that wouldn’t require heavy lifting to ‘Bosscat-up’ the space,” he says. “I’d like to keep a concept in this general area, because we have a great following.”
Between now and September 28, Bosscat will operate normally, running its full menu daily until the final day of service. The final weekend will feature a party atmosphere with a DJ for the final Sunday brunch. He hopes friends and regulars will stop by for one more Fruity Pebbles French toast or a burger with the same level of enthusiasm shown to his friend Ryan Lachaine, whose recently-shutted restaurant Riel opened about a month before Bosscat.
“I saw what Ryan did. I thought the city gave him a phenomenal farewell,” Reed says. “We said let’s run it to the end of the month. Then we’ll transition the space to private events for Q4. We’ll keep the space through the end of the year.”
That’s right. Anyone looking to book a holiday party can look to Bosscat as a potential venue. After all, nothing says ‘job well done, team’ quite like Bosscat’s selection of more than 250 whiskies.