In the end, the economy just got to be too much for George Mun-tean.

Faced with a decline of at least half his business, the colorful Roseville character shut his restaurant, Muntean’s Boulevard Bistro, in late May.

“It wasn’t enough income,” Muntean, 59, said last week. “The economy went down and I felt the drop of customers.”

That’s precipitated a rare pause in a life that’s been marked by an intense entrepreneurial spirit.

Seeking freedom, Mun-tean moved from Romania to the United States in 1973. He worked as a janitor and took English classes, tried various businesses, and eventually ended up a restaurateur in Sacramento.

The Roseville resident has also published Romanian Sacramento Magazine and operated a music school; last year, he ran unsuccessfully for the City Council on a pro-business platform.

In late 2005, he moved his Sacramento soup and sandwich shop to Foothills Boulevard in Roseville, buying a Brookfield’s restaurant that had gone defunct.

His pitch was unique in a market dominated by chain restaurants: international food, featuring a different destination for each day of the week, leavened with Muntean himself – always gregarious, always pushing samples of his homemade soup, which a sign declared the “best in Roseville.”

But about a year ago, Muntean – like so many others – started noticing a change. The customers stopped coming.

“I had a lot of customers tell me they had lost the job,” he said. “I started looking around. I was cutting hours, cutting everything I could to save the business, and finally I had to close it.”

So for now, Muntean is doing something he probably should have been doing anyway – taking a break.

“I didn’t have a chance to do anything around the house. Now I’m working only in the garden,” he said.

But don’t count him out.

“I need a couple more weeks to relax and then I’m going to put a few things together to see what’s next,” he said. “I think I’ll go back to Sacramento and do the same thing.”