Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen, the fine-dining restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Cannon in Morristown, has closed. The restaurant announced the news on its Instagram page Thursday.
Cannon cited a shift in dining habits since the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a failed sale of the restaurant, for the closure. New Year’s Eve was the eatery’s last night of business.
“Since the COVID pandemic, significant changes in consumer behavior, labor and cost increases across the board have made operating and producing the high quality product we have been known for, increasingly difficult,” Cannon said in the Instagram post. “We had sought to find a buyer for the restaurant this past year and a deal was in place to take effect in December. The purchaser backed out at the eleventh hour and we find ourselves with no choice but to say goodbye.”
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Jockey Hollow opened in 2014, located inside the historic century-old Vail Mansion, a massive estate that looms over Morristown and made for an impressive dining setting. While some restaurants skate by on ambiance alone, Jockey Hollow’s cuisine was worthy of its posh environ — a restaurant that found a way to make fine-dining approachable even for neophyte foodies. Cannon’s eatery mastered everything from smash burgers and street tacos to squid ink pappardelle and prime filet mignon, helping it earn the No. 5 spot on NJ.com’s list of the best restaurants in Morristown.
The restaurant closed temporarily in Nov. 2020 during the pandemic as business dwindled before reopening in 2021. But even as restaurants returned to full-fledged dining in earnest that year, Cannon started to see changes in how New Jerseyans were eating.
People were dining out less frequently, and not dining out as late as they once did.
“Everyone was in a cocoon for two years, they just don’t go out to eat as late as they they used to. I mean, no one goes out after eight o’clock,” Cannon told NJ Advance Media. “A place like Morristown, in the summer it’s like a ghost town, much more so than usual. When you lose all the business after eight o’clock, that’s a good 20% of your business.”
Cannon said paying staff higher wages to return to work after COVID added to Jockey Hollow’s struggles. The rise of prepared foods at grocery stores plus delivery services like GrubHub and Uber Eats also created more competition for the restaurant.
The chef further opined it may be the middle of the pack, fancy-but-not-too-fancy restaurants that struggle to survive in 2025.
“Fast-casual is nipping at our behinds, but the ultra-luxury restaurants are still doing fine in New York City because they charge 350 bucks a person,” Cannon said. “It seems to me that the restaurant industry is going to kind of lose a lot of that middle tier.”
Cannon and Jockey Hollow had worked on a deal for another ownership group to take over Jockey Hollow, but it fell apart at the last minute.
“The people that were buying had opened a restaurant in August, and it was doing terribly,” Cannon said. “So they walked out.”
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Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com and followed on Twitter at @J_Schneider and on Instagram at @JeremyIsHungryAgain.
