TownHall Public House bows out for second time in Vista

The exterior of TownHall Public House restaurant on South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista.

Sept. 10, 2020 4 PM PT

TownHall Public House, a family-run restaurant in Vista, closed Sunday, three days shy of its one-year anniversary.

Owners Roddy and Aaron Browning launched Townhall on Sept. 10 of last year at 230 S. Santa Fe Ave. to replace the Vista branch of their successful 10-year-old Oceanside restaurant The Flying Pig Pub & Kitchen. TownHall struggled to make its mark downtown, in part because of ongoing construction on Santa Fe Avenue that reduced auto traffic.

The Brownings closed TownHall in January, then reopened it again in May for takeout and patio dining only. But the restaurant never gained enough traction to be financially successful. The Brownings say the building is now for sale.

Pam Kragen writes about restaurants for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.