Our buddy Sixty Grit informs us that "Mama Maria's" and "Sal's Pizzeria" is on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares tonight.
I have to miss it because we are working on a dress fitting in the store and won't get home in time to see it.
I had written about "Mama Maria's" in a "Remembrance of Things Pabst" post.
As a postcript I can tell you what happened to the joint. I was pretty friendly with John around the time I wrote that. We went there a lot. Once a week at least. I brought a bunch of people there. Friends. Customers. Even all of Lisa's friends when they had the bitches get-together. We spent a lot of dough in there last year.
But they had problems. First the place was very slow. Very very slow. And it was always boiling in there. They would never put on the air conditioning. John would love to come over and sit down and complain about how Marco Polo and Enoteca was killing him. How they had a lot of business and he was dead. I was planning to bring a lot of business with the show to his joint. But BBC wouldn't go to his joint. They loved Enoteca and we ended up going there every day. And we became good friends with Marco and Denny and Jay and Gloria and Austin and all the people who worked there. So we stopped going to "Mama Maria's."
The last couple of times I went there the people I would bring would be full of complaints. This was wrong and that was bad. Do I need to listen to that? So I have been avoiding going there. The one time I went John wasn't around and it was pretty tough.
The makeover is ludicrous. They have the same half a retard waiter and now they have those tiny yuppie tables like all of the other yuppie joints. Gordan Ramsey made it into a yuppie joint that I wouldn't go to on a bet. Every time I pass by it is pretty much empty. He is making his living with the pizzeria.
I told him "Being on TV is everything you think it is going to be."
I think he get's it now.
9 comments:
Regrets?
Wasn't Sal's the Bed-Sty pizzeria in "Do The Right Thing" ?
Friend of mine opened a restaurant in an upscale suburb, Despite having a great menu and a talented chef, he closed it in less than one year.
He told me there were two reasons. First, it's a damn tough business. Second "too many restaurants and not enough eaters."
Back when Herb Caen wrote for the San Francsico Chronicle, he would periodically announce when a Chinese restaurant would go out of business. He would always end it with "One down, 4,000 to go."
Kinda follows what Michael said.
Thanks for the Herb "Sacamena Kid" Caen reference - that made me laugh. He was a funny son of a gun. I learned more about The City reading his column than I did any other way. He was a rare character.
When a Chinese restaurant closes they'll open another one in a half hour.
That's why there was always 4,000 to go.
When a Chinese restaurant closes they'll open another one in a half hour.
Much like character archetypes at TOP.
Outside of Manhattan the restaurants that succeed over the long haul are "comfortable." There's Chinese restaurant comfortable and German restaurant comfortable and Greek restaurant comfortable and even Soul Food restaurant comfortable, the point being that there is something comforting about a certain kind of decor a certain ambience that appeals to those who naturally gravitate to an Italian restaurant and there's an ambience that makes them uneasy. The disaster is when a restaurateur goes with what's hip and rips out his comfortable old red leather banquets. And why? For the sake of being au courant. Ya know, in those old comfortable joints the food ain't always all that great. Decent but not super. But the place fits the repeat customers like a glove. A home away from home.
And all that from a guy who eats at home. ;^)
You are right on the money ricpic.
It gave up the neighborhood vibe to copy the yuppie joints but the yuppies are not going to go to his place. He had to sell it differently.
Marco Polo did it right. He refurbished but kept the old school character. Waiters in uniforms with ties. Solid service and a little class. Not mismatched mugs and chipped china for shabby chic bullshit.
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