Spanish River Grille, the once-popular New Smyrna Beach restaurant, has closed. There currently is no website associated with the business and the phone number has been disconnected.

Henry Rodriguez, who bought the restaurant from original owners Henry and Michele Salgado at the beginning of the year, said on Monday that he closed it a week ago Sunday after meeting with a certified public accountant who told him that he would not likely see a return on any funds that he put into the business. “He said, ‘You can put more money in the restaurant but you’ll never get it back,’” Rodriguez said of the CPA.

Rodriquez told me that a big part of the problem was that the restaurant was so popular under the Salgados. When news came that it had been sold, he said, “sales started dropping, dropping, dropping.”

“We tried to keep the same food, the same quality,” he said, but it seemed that the people who were regulars before the sale stopped frequenting the restaurant after the Salgados sold it.

Rodriguez said that he is reviewing his options but that if he does open another restaurant there, it will have a new name and concept.

According to some staff members, the closing was abrupt. But Rodriguez said that he paid all of his staff and suppliers.

h/t: Jim Heekin