Well, at some point they lost the food angle. I think they just weren't able to pay the cook enough to stay. Something like that.
Sometime last year they put up a sign announcing that another restaurant in the area would be taking over their food services. Sounded good. Maybe they could start offering meals again. That wouldn't take effect for a while, though.
It turned out that the new partners would control the side of the store with the majority of seating space. They closed their side off for renovations, with plywood separating the two. Meanwhile the old owners arranged some tables to seat as many people as they could, which to be fair has worked okay so far.
When I went back most recently the new partners had put up a permanent plaster wall, which a guy was painting. The new people are just running a completely separate business now. On top of that, their side has the public bathrooms.
It's just weird to me how the deal keeps changing, and every change leaves the old place worse off. What kind of Darth Vader "pray I do not alter it any further" business is going on here?
2 comments:
Shifting ground, indeed. It sounds very like a hostile takeover has been enacted at that little cafe. Might have been worth their while to take up a collection for the cook. I wonder why it is that the restaurant that took over the food concession didn't do so at their own establishment? Did the building fall down or did it get rented to somebody else? It sounds as though the original place has been left without a kitchen as well as missing a bathroom. I don't know much about regulations but that doesn't seem quite right. Who has the right to the front door, I wonder?
Anyhow, we watched this video of Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn's entertaining take on this year's Davos meeting. It might give you some amusement :) - start at 7:40 to miss the long opening.
Out front they have espresso machines, a microwave for warming things up, obviously freezers for the ice cream. I'm not positive if they at least have something to grill paninis and the like on. Again, the initial premise seemed to be that they'd have new people cooking for them, which is clearly not how it's happening now. The front door is theirs, that's at least not in doubt. There's another door which used to be open sometimes and locked sometimes, and that will be the the new restaurant's entrance. As to how all this happened, how the decisions were made, it's puzzling. And I don't know how much the baristas will be able to tell me while they're at work.
Taibbi and Kirn have good chemistry. The description of Davos as "the Cannes film festival for oligarchs" is about as good a description as I can think of.
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