Mangu on my mind

A new restaurant has just opened in my neighborhood. Not that its big news; there are many that open every other month but are eventually doomed to failure. There was this one restaurant, a jamaican coffee shop type place which never even saw day one and the place was set to open, with furnishings and food. Next thing I know, the place has a for rent sign up front. The Korean restaurant which my wife and I were excited about at first, bombed after 3 months (in just the third month, a sign was put up declaring "under new management").

I don't want to make conclusions but I believe a big reason certain type of restaurants don't do as well is due to the make up of the community. We have a large jewish community where I live and I've noticed that many of the restaurants have made accomadations to jewish beliefs making the bigogi and jerk chicken kosher. Not that it helps any since no one patronized the places. We also had an Indian restaurant. It didn't do so well closing after a year in business. Guess what does well here? Bagel shops and kosher steak houses. Don't want to sound like Michael Richards or Mel Gibson here but its an unspoken truth here.

There was recently some flack that the community was insisting that we have a Starbucks added to the main street. They have been interested in opening a store in our community for some time. A store owner who had a corner spot refused to rent to Starbucks feeling that they weren't paying him enough for the spot so instead it was given to a kosher butcher shop (we have 2 other kosher butcher shops on our main strip already).

So now we have a new latino restaurant that opened about a month ago. Passing by I can smell the food and my mouth is watering. I won't have to drive across to Manhattan anymore for estafodo de carne, mofongo or habichuelas con arroz.

There isn't an mangu on the menu yet but I told the owner to make sure to add quezo frito as well. The only complaint he's gotten from customers was that the service was poor (due to lack of staff). Dude! Get some waiters in there!! I can't let this place close down on me as well otherwise its back to eating kosher take out.

Seperated at Birth?

It seems to me ever since Jessica Alba arrived on the scene that all these entertainment news correspodents started to look alike, have the letter "M" promiment in their names, and have similar features like Jessica. For some reason or another you can't place exactly what their nationality is. Here are three:

Maria Menounos from Access Hollywood, one of the first out there ethnic girls (from Greece)




Vanessa Minillo also from ET; known for making herself feel better for sympathazing with overweight people by being rejected by hot guys when wearing a fat suit.



Mayleen Ramey from Yahoo Talent Show; aspiring hard to place ethnicity anchorwoman.