Carson City restaurant Bella Vita closing

Bella Vita restaurant in the Carson Mall is closing.

The restaurant will be open through April 11, when it will go out in style with its final karaoke night.

“Man, it was a hard decision,” said Lori Baxter, owner.

But Baxter is venturing into new businesses. She will maintain Bella Vita catering, operating soon out of a new commercial kitchen she is building on Winnie Lane, with some retail space where she will be also offering what she calls grab-and-go dinners and lunches.

And she is opening three Bella Vita small cafes. Next month, a cafe inside Carson Tahoe Care Center on Mountain Street will open, serving coffee, tea, breakfast sandwiches and burritos, yogurt-and-granola parfaits, bagels and other breakfast items, and salads and sandwiches for lunch. The cafe will be open to the public.

The other two cafes, another in Carson City and one in Minden, will open next month as well, but said she couldn’t yet discuss those locations.

Bella Vita will also continue to operate in seven farmers markets during the spring and summer, including the one on Curry Street.

Baxter said she is selling the Carson Mall restaurant — equipment, furnishings, dinnerware — to a new owner who plans to open another restaurant in the location at the end of May.