PHOTO: Left to right: Chris Pitts plays saxophone, Ricardo Pearlman plays drums and Richard Hale-Shaw plays bass at Moldova’s Jazz Jam on Tuesday, Aug. 13. Not pictured is Dan Pappas on keyboard. Photo by Christian Maitre
Moldova, Newton’s only Moldovan restaurant, will be closing its doors on Dec. 29 after nine years in business.
“We’re happy with what we did, but we’re disappointed we couldn’t bring it to a different ending,” said owner Artur Andronic.
“We wanted to get people to try something they’re unfamiliar with, but breaking that wall is rather difficult,” said Andronic. “We wanted to focus on authenticity,” he added.
He knew he’d have the support of the small Moldovan community in the area, but he wanted to try and market his country’s food to everyone. Moldovan food has many ingredients Americans are used to, like chicken and potatoes, and it shares dishes with better-known Eastern European cuisines, like borscht or lamb kebab.
Nonetheless, this proved challenging. “It’s a hard cuisine to sell,” he said.
2023 was a good year for the restaurant, although operating costs were high. The restaurant started offering live music three nights a week, including a Tuesday jazz jam, where local jazz musicians could come play together. “The musicians liked having a restaurant where they were the focus, not just background music,” he said.
The beginning of 2024 seemed good, but by quarter two, sales were in a slump.
“Across the board, everyone was struggling,” said Andronic, saying that even barbers and movers he spoke to were also seeing decreased sales. For a business that already has incredibly tight margins like a restaurant, even a slight loss of income can create huge challenges. Operating costs remain fixed no matter how many people walk in the door.
“It affects us when we have a few bad weeks, and in 2024, we had a few bad months,” he said.
He had to stop hosting bands because not enough people came to listen to the music to cover the costs of paying the band. He considered stopping the jazz jam, too, but he liked working with the musicians, and decided to keep it going until December.
He and his co-owner, his wife Sandra, met with professional restaurant advisors for advice.
The counsel told them it might take several more years for the restaurant to be able to turn around.
“We were tired,” said Andronic. “We were in burnout mode, and there’s no guarantee that after four or five years it would be better.”
Their advisors began suggesting they consider closing in June, and the Andronics made their final decision in November.
He’s been pleasantly surprised by the amount of support they’ve gotten since they announced they were closing, and is glad people have been coming by to tell him how much they liked the food.
“When visitors are sad, it puts a big emotional stress on us about closing,” he said. “I’m going to miss this entire thing.”
Andronic isn’t sure what he’ll do next, although he’d like to stay in the restaurant industry. He’s come to accept that as much as he loves his food, it’s hard to get Americans to love it too.
“I want to do food that is more approachable to the vast majority of people,” he said.
Andronic has a well-rounded restaurant background, having started as a dishwasher and then working as a sommelier and a general manager before opening Moldova. He also holds an MBA from Suffolk University, which is what initially brought him to the Boston area.
He hopes that he can apply these various skills to another endeavor, whether that’s as a partnership at a new restaurant or improving an existing one.
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