Popular casual eatery in Tacoma closes

Moshi Ramen Bar, a restaurant that had a reputation as being a home away from home for some of Tacoma’s queer community, has closed.

“ I personally was a huge fan of Moshi. I’d go there all the time,” Gabriel Alves De Lima said. “It was one of my favorite date night spots. Just ’cause of, in no small part, how accepting it was of the queer community and the kind of space it was.”

Alves De Lima works at Howdy Bagel, a queer-owned bagel shop in South Tacoma. He said the two spots had a connection, with staff from one frequenting the other and vice versa. 

“A lot of us here on the Howdy team were huge fans of Moshi and were super sad when we heard the news,” Alves De Lima said.

The news came as a surprise to customers and staff alike. Former employees said they were let go with no notice after the restaurant’s final service.

But staff said they were nervous about the restaurant’s future for months. They had heard about a pending sale for both Moshi and neighboring restaurant, Indo Asian Street Eatery, and became uncertain about the restaurant’s future.

Ava Grubel, who worked at Moshi for over two years, said she and her coworkers watched a lot of staff leave Indo once a new owner took over, but they didn’t know if Moshi would be closed.

Now, the new owners plan to open a different restaurant where Moshi was.

Ultimately, Grubel said she and her coworkers wish they had been given notice that the place was closing. 

“ If there was a date, if we were let know when we were gonna close, we all would’ve worked so hard to do so,” Grubel said. “We would’ve probably thrown a proper goodbye to the restaurant on that last day we were closed.” 

Samuel Kirbawy was Moshi Ramen Bar’s general manager from when it opened in 2018 to when it closed at the beginning of May. He said the restaurant wasn’t intentionally opened as a queer-centered space. But people came to work at Moshi because it got a reputation for being inclusive and welcoming. 

“ It was never a mission statement or anything like that,” Kirbawy said. “We just kept having more and more community in our space, and I think people picked up on that.”

Kirbawy met his partner, Wren Leibee, when Leibee started working at Moshi. Both said they understand the choice their former employers made to sell the restaurants, but they take issue with how the new owners handled the closure.

“ He said basically all of us are terminated and we have a chance to be rehired,” Leibee said.

When NWPB reached someone who works at one of the new owners’ other businesses requesting an interview, they referred NWPB to an article in the Tacoma News Tribune, which they said laid out all relevant facts and that they had no further comment at this time.

“ There was no number, there was no guarantee that we’re gonna be rehired, and there was definitely a guarantee of it not being the same space or even close to the same space,” Leibee said.

Leibee and Kirbawy said they would like to see more protections for employees of smaller businesses. 

“ A lot of people, I think if they’re not gonna be supportive, are gonna try to make like a dollars and cents sort of argument about this,” Kirbawy said. “But what did happen is that Tacoma has one less queer space.”

Washington state recently passed legislation — which goes into effect on July 27 — that requires employers with 50 or more employees to give a 60-day notice of a business closure or mass layoff. But the law leaves out businesses with less than 50 employees, like Moshi, which had about 16 employees.

In an effort to support staff, Kirbawy opened a GoFundMe that raised over $13,000, which he said amounts to about $800 per person. They closed the fundraiser on June 2.

“We felt like we had received enough support, and are really, really thankful to our community,” Kirbawy said.

Grubel said she has been able to receive unemployment while she looks for a new job, but the GoFundMe meant a lot to her. 

“Seeing that number rise all the time when it was going on, like, I’d open my phone, I’d sob,” Grubel said.

Alves De Lima said the loss of Moshi will be felt by the city, in part because its closure means there’s not as many different kinds of eateries. Moshi was a restaurant where people could bring their kids or find community if they didn’t drink. A lot of queer centered spaces around the city are bars, Alves De Lima said.

“ It’s just another like part of why it’s such a bummer to lose it,” he said.

Some of the staff have expressed interest in opening another restaurant. They’d like to open something cooperatively owned that would allow staff to share the profits. 

“ It’s something that we’ve talked about for many years, but we would like to open something that is essentially worker-owned and operated so that everybody gets the value of their labor back out of it,” Kirbawy said.

Kirbawy and Leibee said they know how long it might take for that dream to become a reality. But in the meantime, they said they’re having fun debating what kind of food they might serve.

“I’m not sure anybody’s nailed down a good concept yet — we love making ramen for sure,” Kirbawy said.