Old Country Buffet, an original anchor tenant in Eastland Shoppes off North Green River Road just south of Morgan Avenue, has closed its doors after 16 years.
Customers who arrived Monday for lunch were surprised to find the restaurant interior being dismantled and the pieces being loaded into trucks.
The business closed Sunday in the middle of a shift.
The reason for Old Buffet's closing was not immediately clear. Area resident Ruth Seifert said her seniors group, Young At Heart, had met there the first Tuesday of each month for the past 15 years.
"We're just sick about it (closing)," she said. "It was just great. We had the private room, and the food was good, too."
Seifert said her group will move its meetings to the Golden Corral on Pearl Drive on Evansville's West Side. "But it won't be the same," she said.
Eastland Shoppes, where Old Country Buffet operated, is owned by Cincinnati-based Phillips Edison & Co. Gloria Siegler, director of Phillips Edison's investor relations, said Monday Phillips Edison officials hadn't been notified yet of the closing. She said that wasn't unusual, however. She said tenants typically opt to notify all their employees first.
Siegler said the Eastland Shoppes space, which housed the buffet restaurant, will be redeveloped for a future tenant that is still to be confirmed.
Old Country Buffet's is owned by Buffets, Inc., of Eagan, Minn. A call to corporate offices for a comment on the closing was not returned.
A rumor circulated among patrons that a food violation shut down the buffet restaurant. But David Gries, supervisor of the food section of the Vanderburgh County Health Department, said the rumor was not true.
He said the restaurant had a history of relatively good inspection reports. Gries said when a health department inspector last inspected the Old Country Buffet Sept. 27 the business had only two noncritical violations - neither of which would warrant the closing of the business.