After nearly a year in Bay View, Mother’s, 2900 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., has closed in the neighborhood’s historic White House building.
Chef-owner Vanessa Rose confirmed the closure in a phone call with the Journal Sentinel on June 22.
Rose said the decision behind the closure was a culmination of mounting pressure facing independent restaurants, from a difficult economy and rising costs to the emotional toll of running an underfunded business.
“Rather than continue to struggle and dig the hole deeper, it was time to be done,” Rose said. “I’m very proud of what we were able to do, and that doesn’t mean that it needed to continue.”
In the restaurant’s last few weeks of business, Rose said service had “sputtered out,” forcing some nightly closures and canceled reservations.
“There’s definitely some grieving, but there’s also a certain lightness that comes with not having to be responsible for quite so much anymore,” she said. “Eighty-five percent of restaurants close within the first year, and something like 92% in the first two years. To start out underfunded, to be doing as many radical things as we were and to still live roughly as long as anybody else is a validating experience.”
Mother’s opened June 26, 2025, in the historic White House building, taking over after another restaurant, SAGE, closed in the space earlier that year. Prior to SAGE, the space was home to French restaurant The White House.
In its yearlong run, the restaurant became known as a welcoming, LGBTQ+-forward space with an ambitious kitchen and intimate atmosphere. Its menu featured globally inspired dishes that fused cuisines from across the world while highlighting seasonal ingredients, including dishes like Madeira mushrooms, jiang feng, tikka masala gnocchi and berbere-spiced hanger steak.
It also had an unconventional European-style dining method, where tipping was not expected, and taxes and service charges were built into the menu’s prices.
Rose opened the restaurant after a series of successful pop-ups held at Ardent, where she had been a sous chef. Prior to opening Mother’s, Rose also worked in top Milwaukee kitchens like Amilinda, Odd Duck, Balzac and Braise.
Months after opening, Mother’s racked up local and national accolades that most restaurants spend years chasing. In January, she was named a James Beard Award semifinalist in the national Category of Emerging Chef. It was her first nod from the James Beard Foundation.
Mother’s was also named one of Milwaukee’s best new restaurants of 2025 by the Journal Sentinel.
Rose said the uptick in attention brought in many new guests, but mounting expectations for perfection put extra pressure on the kitchen.
“I think people were expecting polished chrome and the kind of fine dining that, while I hold a lot of love in my heart for it, was something that we were very deliberately trying not to be,” she said. “We were just trying to be a relatively low-key place that you could go for a quality and joyful experience, regardless of who you were.”
What’s next remains uncertain. For now, Rose said she’s looking forward to spending more time with her partners and potentially reclaiming a few hobbies she left behind while running her restaurant.
“If successes are good memories and failures are good lessons, then I have a lot of good lessons and a lot of good memories,” she said. “I’ve accomplished everything I hoped to accomplish in the culinary industry. If I were done now, I think I could hold my head up high and be proud of the body of work I’ve accomplished.”
More than anything, Rose said she hopes people remember Mother’s not just for the food for its accolades, but the community that formed around it.
“It wasn’t just us making the food and drinks and serving the tables that made it special,” she said. “It’s always the guests that make the restaurant, and we had some really incredible ones.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Acclaimed restaurant Mother’s closes after one year in Bay View
Reporting by Rachel Bernhard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Rachel Bernhard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
