Italian Eatery and Sister Spot Un Dito Both Close in South Minneapolis

Italian Eatery and its next-door sibling Un Dito, the connected south Minneapolis restaurants run by Eric and Vanessa Carrara at 4724 Cedar Ave. S., closed together in June 2024. The Carraras, who owned the building, said the restaurants were still successful but that they wanted to step away while ahead, announcing the decision in a newsletter that thanked longtime customers.

Closing two concepts at once concentrated the loss for the block, which lost a fuller dinner room and its more casual walk-in companion in one stroke. Pairing two restaurants side by side lets a small operator share staff, kitchens and overhead and run two experiences from one footprint, a model that works when both rooms are full and bites harder when traffic thins, because the two rooms rise and fall together.

The space did not stay empty. The Carraras initially looked for a tenant and listed the property, and the restaurant reopened on Feb. 10, 2025, as ie by Travail, run by the Travail Collective team of James Beard Award semifinalists Mike Brown, Bob Gerken and James Winberg. The new operators kept many of the original favorites, including the mushroom cappelletti, while adding their own dishes.

The closure and reboot bracket a familiar stretch in south Minneapolis dining, where rising costs and uneven foot traffic have pressed on independent operators. For the regulars who treated the pair as their own, the loss was personal: a favorite table, a server who knew the order, the easy plan of walking over. The address is back in business, though under a different name and team than the one that built the following over the prior decade.