Aldea chef-owner George Mendes will shutter his more casual Portuguese restaurant Lupulo come December. Mendes tells Eater in an email that “a new lease structure put in place the past year has made operations financially difficult.”

Though the restaurant, a refuge among the middling chains near Penn Station, will close, Mendes has already started searching for a new location. In the meantime, he’ll focus his full attention on Aldea, his Michelin-starred, more upscale Portuguese restaurant in Flatiron. There, one part of Lupulo will live on through the sale of Portuguese egg custard tarts that Mendes implemented earlier this year.

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Flushing Sichuan restaurant Szechuan Mountain House has opened its East Village location at 23 Saint Mark’s Place, complete with a koi pond and cast-iron tea post. Bedford and Bowery reports that the restaurant is aiming high — owners want the location to win a Michelin star at some point. Dishes like sliced pork belly with chili garlic sauce, Chinese yam, and fish fillet stew with pickled cabbage and chili are on the menu. A grand opening will come later this month.

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