Those Chicken & Pork meatballs are magic (Photo by LaTur via the DCist Flickr Pool)

It was an amazing twenty-first century idea: Chipotle, but for Thai street food. Unfortunately, it couldn’t even hack it for a decade.

When ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen opened in Dupont in 2011, our reviewer called it “a better alternative to many of the painful Asian restaurants in the area.”

More area locations followed—eight of the total 15 locations of the Chipotle-owned chain are in D.C. and Maryland. ShopHouse seemed to be investing in the District, too. It had lines around the block after offering free meals every Tuesday last October to anyone who had a D.C. Public Library card, (DCPL saw a spike in library card applications amid the promo.)

But alas, not all that is spicy can stay. In an earnings call at the end of October, Chipotle said it was giving up its ShopHouse concept to focus on pizza and burgers. “After operating in three diverse markets, we have determined ShopHouse hasn’t demonstrated an attractive unit economic model,” CEO Steve Ells said.

Since then, though, the ShopHouse spots have remained open, leaving noodle bowl lovers in a state of limbo—until now.

Nation’s Restaurant News reports that those ShopHouse doors are about to shut for good.

Chris Arnold, a spokesperson for Chipotle, said that the company has a deal in place to sell all 15 of the ShopHouse leases and the restaurants will close for good on March 17. He added that current employees will have the opportunity to work at Chipotle and will get paid for an extra week after the closures.

“We now have a deal in place to sell the ShopHouse leases and believe that is the right decision at this time,” Arnold said in an email to Nation’s Restaurant News.

So who bought the leases for the four locations in D.C. (Chinatown, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Union Station) and four in Maryland (Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, and Columbia)? We’ve reached out to Chipotle and will update when we hear back.