For every two steps forward, K Street Mall seems to take one step back. It happened again this weekend when Michel Bloch abruptly closed his Crepe Cafe at 9th and K, open only since August, a time when several restaurants bloomed along the struggling mall.

"It's better to have a painful end than an endless pain," says Bloch, recalling advice handed down by his father.

Bloch hung up his creperie and raclette for two principal reasons: Business didn't materialize as he anticipated, and he needs to tend to pressing family matters in Europe. While the restaurant was busy at lunch, breakfast and dinner were so slow he couldn't afford to hire the help he would have liked to give him a break. His work schedule was complicated by living on a ranch at Cool in El Dorado County, making for a long commute.

"I couldn't make it," says Bloch, who introduced crepes to midtown Sacramento three decades ago when he set up a trailer along P Street between 19th and 20. He then took the trailer on a circuit of county fairs, music festivals and the like, established crepe cafes in outlying areas, and created the Crepe Institute to train prospective crepe entrepreneurs.

His immediate plans are to visit his mother in France and to pay more attention to his horse, which he says he's been neglecting since opening the cafe.