WINDSOR — The dining room at Bistro Midva was full of warm light and lively conversation on a September weeknight.

At the small tile-topped bar, Kurt Dermody, a West Windsor resident and Ascutney Outdoors board member, and Ryan Palmer, the Windsor County sheriff and member of the Windsor Selectboard, held a good-natured debate over whose meal was superior.

“The lamb shanks are where it’s at,” declared Dermody, as Palmer gave a wry smile and enjoyed his hanger steak.

The two friends raved not only about the food, but the important role that the small restaurant and its owners have played in the Windsor community in its two-year tenure on Main Street.

Palmer credited Midva’s owners with bringing people to Windsor’s downtown from around the region.

“They are great ambassadors,” he said. “I’m lucky to call them my friends, and Windsor is so lucky to have them.”

Owners and Windsor residents Chad Lumbra and Arlanda Erzen describe their menu as “modern American with a lot of French influence.” The young couple takes pride in introducing less-common dishes to their customers with menu items such as foie gras, beef cheeks and chicken liver pate.

“There was a lot of skepticism around beef cheeks,” Erzen laughed, but diners came to appreciate the eclectic and ever-changing menu.

That dining experience will no longer be available after this weekend. Just a month after marking two years in business on Sept. 1, the restaurant is set to close on Sunday.

Lumbra does most of the cooking, and said that he appreciates that his customers trust him with unfamiliar dishes. Erzen, a grants officer in Dartmouth College’s Office of Sponsored Projects, transitions from the office to the restaurant most nights. Fluent in several European languages, she and Lumbra met while she was completing her university linguistics degree in her native Ljubljana, Slovenia, and he, a native of Vershire, was traveling through Europe working in different restaurants.

Despite the restaurant’s closing, Windsor isn’t losing Lumbra and Erzen. Sitting in Midva’s cozy foyer as meal service wound down, the couple reflected on their accomplishments and their plans for the future.

“We’re ready to close this chapter, but we’re not done being business owners in Windsor,” Erzen said. There is another project on the horizon, according to Lumbra, and they’ve looked at different buildings, but it hasn’t yet fully taken shape.

“We’re still happy with what we’ve done in two years,” Lumbra says that he believes in karma, noting that “we put a lot of good work into this. … I can walk away and try to do something else without a huge sense of loss.”

It has been emotional to see old friends come in during their final month of service. But Lumbra says that “if I had it to go back, I’d do it all over again.”

They plan to apply the same work ethic they applied to running this business to future efforts.

“Daunting” may seem like an understated way to describe opening a restaurant in 2021, amidst an ongoing global pandemic. But for Lumbra, a Culinary Institute of America graduate with experience in kitchens in the U.S. and Europe, the pull of owning his own restaurant was strong.

When the couple looked at 131 Main Street, formerly the home of Au Jus restaurant, it immediately conjured an image of Edward Hopper’s 1942 “Nighthawks” painting depicting customers at the counter of an all-night diner.

“Are you nuts!?” Erzen said of the typical reaction to their plans. But the pull, of the building, of a restaurant, was irresistible. “If the world is ending, let’s do something crazy!” Erzen said, laughing at the memory.

“The hardest part of opening a restaurant is naming it,” said Erzen, explaining that Midva means the “both of us” in her native Slovenian.

But the rest of the process isn’t easy, either. Lumbra said they set up coffee service on their first night only to notice they’d forgotten to order coffee cups.

“The first two weeks, you’re just putting out fires,” Erzen said.

It wasn’t until week three that they found a moment to pause, look around and appreciate what they’d done. “It was almost surreal,” Erzen said, of the realization that they had accomplished their longtime goal.

The decision to close now is driven by their frustration over the building’s physical condition, which has forced the business to close for up to two months each winter due to poor insulation. On the disagreement with the building’s owner, Lumbra said that “we just have different standards, and his are just not sustainable for us.” A message left for the building’s owner was not returned by deadline.

Still, Windsor itself holds a strong attraction for the couple, who have no plans to leave.

“Windsor is a great little community,” Erzen said, noting that part of what makes it special is the combination of residents who have lived and worked there for generations with the vibrancy of many newcomers. “Windsor is on the precipice of becoming the next big Upper Valley town,” Lumbra said.

The last day of meal service at Bistro Midva was Friday. On Saturday, the restaurant is scheduled to host a fundraising “Wine Relay” to support Windsor High alum Roger Barraby’s trip to Guadalajara to compete in the Gay Games.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan18020@gmail.com.