Casellula on Pittsburgh's North Side to close Dec. 23

Casellula, a celebration of cheese on Pittsburgh's North Side, is closing.

The restaurant, which shared space in the former Masonic Hall on West North Avenue with City of Asylum's Alphabet City, didn't make it a year.

“We are saddened to tell you that we must close our beautiful restaurant,” owner Brian Keyser wrote on the restaurant's website. “From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank you, all of our friends and loyal guests, for your support and let you know that our last date of operations will be Saturday, December 23rd.”

R. Henry Reese and Diane Samuels, are the co-founders of City of Asylum, which hosts writers exiled or threatened in their home countries.

Reese, in an email to the Tribune-Review on Monday, wrote that City of Asylum wants to have another restaurant there as soon as possible. “We believe the right restaurant — and we were pleased at the reception to Casellula — adds to the enjoyment of our programs and is emblematic of the hospitality we believe in,” Reese wrote.

Keyser modeled Casellula on his New York City cafe. He met the co-founders of City of Asylum through a mutual friend and decided to open the restaurant along side Alphabet City, a bookstore, cafe and music venue operated by the organization.

The restaurant featured a large cheese selection, and an in-house fromager, a sommelier of the cheese world, to put together a cheese plate for patrons.

Casellula opened in early 2017. The restaurant instructed patrons not to tip when it first opened, joining a few other restaurants in the city with no-tipping policies. Nine months later, Casellula changed course and asked for tips.

“Our isolated location, reliance on private events, and the effects of City of Asylum's programming on our business have made it impossible to manage staff in a way that is cost effective,” Keyser wrote on the restaurant's website. “The bottom line is that we will not survive if we don't get our labor costs down substantially. The added tax burden resulting from all money paid to servers being counted as wages is too much for this young restaurant to bear.”

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.