More Restaurant Reviews

Salutations friends and neighbors. Welcome to Friday Letter Number One-hundred-and-one. Hope you enjoy.

Restaurant reviews

We heard the shocking news just a couple of days ago: Two more restaurants in Historic Downtown Greeley have gone white-side-up.

Salvador Deli goes unlamented in these quarters. Here’s why:

1. The cutesy name is a rip-off. Brazen theft. Salvador Dali worked hard all his life to establish his name, and a tiny but pretentious Greeley establishment borrows on that name in a vain attempt to turn a buck. Shame.

The play on words was lame enough that I never felt constrained to go there even once.

2. Salvador Deli was cursed before the doors ever opened: Location, location, location.

The deli inhabited the space once occupied by the old Greeley Café. After that truly historic restaurant died of old age, there was a string of failures – Chinese, Asian, Japanese, Mexican, American, what-have-you.

Potential restauranteurs take note: Don’t even consider opening a business in a facility that has seen a string of failures; even before you open, diners are already tired of your latest brilliant idea. If nothing succeeds like success, imagine how nothing fails like failure.

If you have a bright idea for starting a restaurant, get into one that is currently a success, currently cranking out meals.

As the newly welcomed resident restauranteur, you can gradually add your ideas, revolutionize the place surreptitiously while hanging on to some of the previous customer base.

Go ahead. Add the chocolate-covered sushi. But don’t open a new place where Salvador Deli resided. Chocolate-covered sushi won’t sell there, and neither will anything else.

Corleone’s

This one limped along for several years on the downtown Greeley mall. It billed itself as “Italian Underground & a Pub Above.” A newspaper report said the liquor license has lapsed and the owner has gone on to other schemes.

We went there – once – with friends. The front door was open. The back door was open. Fresh air should have been there. It was not.

The restaurant smelled like the cleaning crew had used beer and urine to wash the floors the night before.

Aroma is a big part of fine dining. But you want the aroma of what you are going to eat, not the aroma of what the college children drank the night before.

Gibby’s

Remember that one? Once upon a time, there was a construction contractor and developer by the name of Gibson who fancied himself as a restauranteur.

The career crossover crashed at the end of the runway. We knew Mr. Gibson in a small way, and he was a very nice man. But he was a contractor, not a restauranteur.

There was another one, downtown. Once upon a time it was a fabric and sewing store upstairs with a restaurant downstairs. The whole thing, including the proprietors, got old.

There was this realtor, see, who fancied himself a restauranteur . . . are you starting to get the drift?

If you need a big tax deduction, and you think operating a restaurant would be “great fun,” go for it. Highly efficient way to lose lots and lots of money, quickly.


Taste of Philly

This is the latest iteration housed in the 16th St. eatery that has the Volkswagen bug mounted upside-down in front. (I think it was called “Beetle Beanery.”)

It’s dumb enough to go into business in the “formerly” context, and dumber than Texas rocks to retain the gimmickry of the previous failure.

Cowboy Church

There’s a huge building at the Lucerne intersection on Highway 85 north of Greeley that has housed many restaurants through the years.

You’d think, in one format or another, it would go. Remote location. Roadhouse atmosphere. Motel next door. Huge parking lot. Liquor license.

Even Doug Kershaw the Ragin’ Cajun thought it might be a good investment. So far, everything anyone has tried there has eventually gone bust.

Now, at least one day a week, the parking lot is pretty much full. I’m not sure what the attraction is to “The Cowboy Church.” Perhaps a man can wear his hat during the sermon. Yeah. “God doesn’t care how I dress.” Yeah. That’ll prove something.

Kidding aside, perhaps the facility has finally found its highest and best use. And if permission to wear your hat indoors, in the presence of ladies, in church, is your thang, may the Holy Spirit grasp you and never let you go, hat and all.

Could be the difference between Heaven and Hell. Could be the difference between salvation and damnation. Go for it.

The Yum Yum Hut

You probably know it as “The Kitchen.” This restaurant is frightfully handicapped with a cramped, poorly arranged dining area. A stairway to upstairs apartments cuts the eating space tragically in halves. Cooking and storage space is scarce. Entrance and exit is difficult.

But year after year, iteration after iteration, “The Kitchen” continues on.

Why, I don’t know. There’s a fast food building next door to The Kitchen that is between owners more than it’s open; so it isn’t just location.

Is it food? Sorry, that ain’t it. Food at “The Kitchen” is marginal at best. You’re likely to get chicken and dumplings without any chicken. The coffee tastes like the coffee maker hasn’t been cleaned since it was “The Yum Yum Hut” when I was in high school. Fifty years ago. So go figure.

One more example

Once upon a time in Capitola, California, a bright young restauranteur thought to play on the “Beatnik-ness” of the Santa Cruz area.

He opened a vegetarian place called “McDharma’s.” (The Dharma Bums is a Jack Kerouac book about those Beatnik people who live around Soquel.)

Mighty McDonald’s Corp. took exception. Ronald and the other clowns residing under the golden arches sued McDharma’s over alleged trademark infringement.

And won. What a victory. McDharma’s is alive and well today, under the assumed name of Dharma's. Victory!

Question: How come The McDharma name tickled me and Salvador Deli got under my skin?

Because McDharma’s attempted a good-natured satirical “competition” with Big Mac. Salvador Deli simply borrowed a famous name without connection. McDharma’s was tongue-in-cheek humorous. Salvador Deli was in bad taste.

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Word of the week: Callous. Latin, callosus from callum, hard skin. It means unfeeling or insensitive. Related of course to “callus,” a hardened, thickened place on the skin. So, you can have a callus without necessarily being calloused.

Next week’s word: Listerine.

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