Super Happy Sushi Closes Up Shop at MOCAD

Cafe 78 pop-up Super Happy Sushi has bid farewell to Midtown. The sushi restaurant located inside the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and operated by culinary empire builders the Detroit Optimist Society quietly closed up shop in January.

Co-owner Dave Kwiatkowski tells Eater that the Detroit Optimist Society decided to part ways with the MOCAD when their lease ended in January. They had taken over the museum’s food and beverage service in February 2015. Chef Rob Lee’s sushi pop up-to-permanent project began serving lunch, dinner, and brunch in the space last September.

Cafe 78 will continue to operate for now under different ownership. “We basically gave the Cafe 78 brand to the museum,” Kwiatkowski says. “The cafe was never a super lucrative thing for us.”

Lee will continue on board with the Detroit Optimist Society and is currently in the process of helping revamp craft cocktail destination The Sugar House’s bar menu. While the dishes are still in the early phases of development, Kwiatkowski says diners can expect “small, calorie-intensive things that go well with drinks” such as ostrich shepherd’s pie and potato croquettes. If all goes well, the new items could debut by the end of March.

In the meantime, Kwiatkowski confirms that the Detroit Optimist Society is continuing to develop new things in the city. “We’ve got a bigger project that will be announced shortly,” he says. “Rob will be a part of that.”

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