All Signs of the Gypsy House Cafe and Hummus Bar Will Soon Disappear

All signs of the former Gypsy House Cafe have disappeared. The Capitol Hill mainstay that suddenly shut down in March is slated to reopen as a sushi restaurant: Little Ginkgo Asian Cafe. Dena and Doniece Derani, twin sisters, had opened Gypsy House in 2004 with their mother, Nomie Derani, as a metaphysical healing center, but it soon turned into a neighborhood gathering place.

Nomie was the cook right from the start, and was always in the kitchen. But she still found enough time to help when her son, Ray Derani, who'd been running a limo service, opened Hummus Bar & Cafe (also known as Gypsy Cafe & Parlor) at 838 Park Avenue West in 2013.

Her double duty didn't last long, though. Hummus (whch briefly went by Gypsy Cafe, too) never caught on and closed a few months later; the property, which turned into the I Candy Car Wash, was sold in 2015.

Now it has sold again: Oyster International, a development company headed by Denver architect Brian Higgins (who bought the Croke-Patterson Mansion in 2011 and turned it into a B&B), just purchased the property in the 2300 block of Champa Street, including the 1,300-square-foot building on top of what's most recently been used as a parking lot.

That spot is likely to be developed into apartments. 
Business wasn't a problem at the Gypsy House Cafe — the booming real estate market was. There's a  liquor-license hearing for the new restaurant on October 14. The Derani sisters had worried that the new owners might paint over the building's Arabian Nights-style mural.

They did.