Lisa Vanderpump announced last week that she and her husband, Ken Todd, would be closing the doors to their Beverly Hills restaurant, Villa Blanca. According to a new report, this wasn’t an easy decision.
An insider recently revealed that when it came to making the decision to permanently close their restaurant after shutting down for several months due to the coronavirus pandemic, the couple struggled because they never wanted to see their run at Villa Blanca come to an end. This came days after the former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member made the closure of her venue official.
“Lisa and Ken loved Villa Blanca and were quite attached to it so it was really hard to close for them and it wasn’t an easy decision to make,” a source close to Lisa told Hollywood Life on July 13.
According to the insider, Villa Blanca was essentially Lisa’s baby and a restaurant she visited nearly daily. As fans of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderpump Rules well know, she opened up Villa Blanca years before expanding her empire with TomTom, SUR Restaurant, and PUMP Lounge in West Hollywood, California and the Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Las Vegas.
“They held onto it so long because they didn’t want to see it close,” they noted.
They went on to say that even prior to the shutdown, Villa Blanca wasn’t doing all that well. Instead, patrons seemed to be focusing on Lisa and Ken’s other establishments in the nearby West Hollywood neighborhood. As the source explained, Villa Blanca was thought of as more of a lunch spot — or somewhere to visit for happy hour — and was never as packed as TomTom, SUR Restaurant, or PUMP Lounge.
“The rent for that corner in Beverly Hills is insanely expensive, too,” the insider added.
While TomTom, which is co-owned by Vanderpump Rules cast members Tom Schwartz and Tom Sandoval, has not yet opened its doors amid the pandemic, Lisa is reportedly hoping to reopen the restaurant sometime next month.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Lisa first confirmed the news of Villa Blanca’s closure during an interview with the Daily Mail on Friday. At the time, she admitted that she and Ken decided to close the restaurant’s doors after their landlord refused to renegotiate their rental agreement on the property.
“If the landlord had been willing to renegotiate and the lease wasn’t ending, we would have reopened, but unfortunately with Coronavirus, the situation was beyond our control,” she shared.
