A longtime favorite Raleigh restaurant has closed quietly after nearly 20 years

After nearly 20 years, one of Raleigh’s most popular French restaurants has closed.

This summer, the Raleigh restaurant Saint Jacques quietly closed its doors in the North Ridge Shopping Center. Since 2004, Saint Jacques epitomized strip mall fine dining, offering gourmet refuge within the busy North Raleigh development.

According to Saint Jacques’ online reservation service, the restaurant closed in July.

“From Saturday, July 8th 2023, the Saint Jacques French Cuisine is permanently closed, thank you for your support in the past,” reads an online message on the restaurant’s OpenTable page.

Saint Jacques was opened in 2004 by married couple Lori and Lil Lacassagne, standing out in the day’s Raleigh dining scene as some of the most exquisite plates of its era. Former News & Observer dining critic Greg Cox once awarded the restaurant a nearly perfect four and a half stars in a review, praising the restaurant’s “Old World charm” and exacting traditional dishes made without pretension.

Over the next decade Saint Jacques continued to impress, making regulars of its dining room and remaining in Cox’s roundup of the Triangle’s best restaurants, earning silver star status, given to the critic’s top picks in the region.

In 2011 the Lacassagnes purchased the former North Carolina Inn in Gibsonville and rebranded it as the Burke Manor Inn. They transformed the inn’s dining offerings and built a version of Saint Jacques there.

Later the couple sold Saint Jacques in Raleigh to focus on the inn full time. Since 2015, Saint Jacques’ owner has been restaurateur and bar owner Ashlie Cade, whose other ventures include The Bison bar and the now closed Blowfish bar on Glenwood Ave.

Cade could not be reached to comment on the Saint Jacques closing. A peek in the restaurant’s windows shows the dining room still full with tables and chairs, but flowers in a vase have dried and dropped their petals.