Wednesday is the last day of operation of Tara Kitchen’s catering business and market, seen Tuesday, in Guilderland.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
The Guilderland location of Tara Kitchen was reimagined as a Mediterranean market, takeout and catering hub in June.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Catering operations will continue until the Guilderland building is sold.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Aneesa Waheed is seen in her Tara Kitchen restaurant on July 19, 2017, in Troy.
John Carl D’Annibale
Tara Kitchen will close its Guilderland location, which house the Moroccan comfort food restaurant’s catering business and market. Wednesday is the restaurant’s last day of operation.
Founder and owner Aneesa Waheed began to see “a declining trend in sales” at the restaurant. The staff tried to “self-diagnose” the causes, prompting a major conversion earlier this year. Waheed and local chef Ric Orlando had reimagined the location as a Mediterranean market, takeout and catering hub for Tara Kitchen in June.
Article continues below this ad
“Unfortunately, that didn’t really work,” Waheed said. Combined with the rising cost of goods and labor shortages that “kept compounding month after month after month,” the decision was made to close the Guilderland location.
“There’s something to be said for fail fast,” Waheed said. “We’ve been here five years now, and it feels like we’ve done what we could have done here. So, it’s just time to sort of think of new ways to be and grow and be sustainable.”
Goods at the market will be 50% off, and catering operations will continue until the Guilderland building is sold. At that point, catering will move to Tara Kitchen’s flagship restaurant in Schenectady.
Make the Times Union a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.
Add Preferred Source
“Could we have hung on and tried to hobble along into next year? Of course — it’s not so desperate that we have to shut it down,” Waheed said. “My thought really was that I want to intentionally focus on some other really big things that are happening within the company. It’s easier to make things grow and prosper when things are going well, rather than constantly trying to plug holes.”
Article continues below this ad
Tara Kitchen in New York City’s Tribeca is “doing gangbusters,” Waheed said, and plans for that location will require Waheed to be onsite more. Additionally, Tara Kitchen has a new location planned, to be announced after details are finalized in 2026.
This marks the second Tara Kitchen location to announce its closure this year. In April, its Wildwood, N.J., location announced it would not reopen after four summers in the shore town. In an April 2025 interview with the Times Union, Waheed said the decision to close the Wildwood restaurant was because her kids were older and preferred to spend their summers at home with friends, not at the Jersey shore.
Tara Kitchen was born out of the popularity of Waheed and husband Muntasim Shoaib’s Moroccan food at farmers markets. The original restaurant opened in Schenectady in 2012. Tara Kitchen is also in Troy, Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood and Hyderabad, India. Waheed opened the restaurant at a former Paesan’s Pizza on Western Avenue in November 2020.
Waheed was named the New York state 2024 “Small Business Person of the Year” by the United States Small Business Administration.
Article continues below this ad
Waheed acknowledged this has been a “difficult, challenging year” for many of her peers. But she also noted that for minority- and women-owned businesses, the financial and labor challenges have been backdropped by growing hostility. She pointed to a Facebook commenter who said Waheed should be deported on a post made by Albany Business Review earlier this week about the restaurant’s closure.
In Tara Kitchen’s diagnosis of the Guilderland location, Waheed said the team questioned if it being led by a Muslim woman had any impact. Waheed said the racism and xenophobic remarks “really was amplified” this year, citing increased Facebook messages, emails and “off-handed remarks that people make.”
“It’s so, so, so hard to pinpoint to this actually happening, because you can kind of sort of sense it. You can sort of feel it, but at the same time, then there’s nothing tangible that you can hold on to and say: Here it is. This is what’s happening,” Waheed said.
Article continues below this ad