Linda Falkenstein
Sunprint on the Square, 10 W. Mifflin St., will be closing come the end of this month, says chef-owner Susan Hendrix.
The cafe, which long held the ground floor space at 1 S. Pinckney St. in the U.S. Bank Building, moved to the 10 W. Mifflin spot in March of 2013. The former Cameo Day Spa space was homier, friendlier and divided into more intimate rooms, with leather couches and chandeliers. The cafe added a wine bar and opened for dinners in May of that year; by November of 2013, the cafe had cut back to its former status as a breakfast and lunch spot. The heart of the cafe remained its breakfasts and its salad bar.
Hendrix says that the cafe had experienced “issues since the move,” with “not being as busy as we’d like. It came to the point where we had to make a decision.”
Sunprint will continue its catering business, which will be run out of the kitchen at the Tempest Oyster Bar. “Henry Doane is letting us use the space,” says Hendrix; Tempest uses it very little during the day save for some prep.
“We do a nice tidy business with catering,” says Hendrix. She hopes that she will also set up a delivery service by fall.
And at some point, she wouldn’t rule out opening a new cafe, mentioning the 800-900 blocks of East Johnson Street as an area where “there’s a lot of cool stuff going on.”
Sunprint on the Square grew out of the long and somewhat confusing proliferation of Sunprint/Sunporch Cafes/Galleries that started with the site upstairs at 638 State St. that is now known as Sunroom Cafe. Sunprint on the Square began as a sister restaurant to a Sunprint formerly located at 704 S. Whitney Way. Hendrix bought the business in 2007, according to Madison Food: A History of Capital Cuisine.
