Detroit's Once Adored Rattlesnake Club Restaurant Shuts

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There was a time in Detroit where award-winning Chef Jimmy Schmidt and his Rattlesnake Club at Stroh River Place on Detroit's riverfront were beloved. 

On Friday, after 36 years, the restaurant officially closed, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The restaurant was a constant on the Detroit Free Press list of Top Tables in metro Detroit, making the list in 2001-05, Freep reporter Susan Selasky writes.

In 2010, about 22 years after opening the restaurant, Schmidt, a former chef at the London Chop House in downtown Detroit, sold his interest in the place. In recent years, it seldom surfaced in conversations about fine dining in Detroit, unlike newer places like Selden Standard, Chartreuse and Shewolf.  

“Changing patterns in dining habits, office occupancy and traffic have negatively impacted revenues since the Covid pandemic," Rattlesnake Club Vice President and CFO, Mark Tuttle wrote in the news release. "Private events, which had always been a pillar of the business, have not recovered."