Julia Pearl Southern Cuisine, the southern-inspired restaurant backed by Tre Wilcox, has closed

Early last week, while I was chasing down a tip that Julia Pearl Southern Cuisine was about to shutter, word filtered out that its culinary director (former Top Chef contestant Tre Wilcox) and chef (Jermaine Brown) had both jumped ship. Yet somehow the year-old Southern-styled restaurant’s doors remained open.

Then late last week, the bell finally tolled. “Julia Pearl is closed for sure,” a Hatch fan who would know such things told us through our private Ethernet messaging system. “Their Facebook is down and there are some notices on the door.”

Beth Rankin was the first to report the closure.

A (former) company spokesman says via press release that Wilcox and Brown, both Abacus restaurant alumni,  already have other jobs. Wilcox will focus on his Tre Wilcox Cooking Concepts and Brown has taken over the kitchen at Great Scott in Grapevine, owned by another Abacus alum, Matthew Scott.

We didn’t write much about Julia Pearl on the Hatch because, well, we heard it wasn’t particularly good. Guess that was true.