Have a feeling of saudade for any restaurant(s)?

Culture, Media, General
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Taking liberties with the Portuguese phrase saudade, I’ve been longing for a bite from a few restaurants that haven’t existed for years/decades.

Chief among those memories are–

Pampkin Cook Katsura, a Tokyo spot specializing in pumpkin-based dishes.

Pyramida, which was originally on the Upper East Side across from Sushi of Gari, had perhaps my favorite Levantine food in Manhattan. Their cashew baklava was neat.

1001 Nights, located in the de facto Muslim quarter of Shenzhen, was my near-daily dose of raw vegetables, hummus, and if the owner was around, a bite or two of baklava. My neighborhood at the time was grim, so this was a respite, and a good meeting place for friends.

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Oh, absolutely. There was a Cantonese restaurant in my hometown that I used to visit with both my dad and my mom (separately, of course — they divorced when I was 2 yrs old) all the time.

I loved the kroepoek / krupuk, and they had an aMAZing noodle soup with every meat known to mankind (ok, most of them: beef, pork, duck, chicken, prawns), lots of veg and delicious wheat noodles. For a while in my 20s, my ex & I would get that soup once a week.

I was able to introduce my PIC to it as well — I think we may have made it there twice, until one summer we returned to find it was now a phone card shop :sob:

I suppose the owners deserved their retirement after 40+ years in the biz.

The Thai Park in Berlin, which is obviously not a restaurant, but it came about as close to visiting Thailand as possible. We miss it dearly, and many a Sunday afternoon spent there dining and drinking mai tais and mojitos brought to our picnic blanket. You could even get Thai massages there.

A small pizza place we used to scoot to specifically to share a couple slices for lunch, including chanterelle pizza in season :yum:

A fried chicken place back in the US. The owner was a bit of a dick, but his chicken as well as his mac & cheese were fantastic.

Finally, our go-to Sichuan place back home. We’d been going with large groups for almost 16 years. The owner retired last fall and moved away, and the new owners turned it into a buffet-only sitch. It’s not the same, and nobody else makes a cuke salad as good as they did.

PS: Great topic, @FindingFoodFluency!

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A friend opened a restaurant in the next town over. It was a labor of love, and from the early planning she had an ongoing topic on The Well, another online discussion forum. Nizza La Bella focused on Mediterranean French and Italian cuisine, pissaladière, bouillabaisse, moules-frites. She was a well-known pizza expert as well, and installed a wood-burning oven. I was the first paying customer, and it quickly became very popular. It was a hangout for local Well people, and I rarely missed Sunday brunch, when it was quiet and you could linger over the Sunday papers and your breakfast pizza. But for personal reasons she couldn’t keep it going, and it closed a year or so before the pandemic hit.

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Saudade…love this. South Milwaukee and Cudahy, WI both had great Polish and Serbian places when I was younger.

Balkanian New Star Maric was the best first date places. Very quaint and run by and old Serbian couple that were absolutely charming. Best spinach burek I’ve ever had.

Czar’s table, Cudahy , WI. Cevapcici are fresh sausages, and this place killed them. Their housemade ajwar and fresh bread was the best start to a supper.

Fountain Blue in Cudahy had great Polish dishes, but my favorite was just called “veal saute gruyere.” I’m not a big veal fan, but this dish tootally won me over, after a czarina appetizer.

Southwoods, Cuday. It is a crime that this supper club went under. My word, the place was elegant and affordable, it was the quintessential supper club. Best prime rib I’ve had in this lifetime.

Family restaurant, S. Mwaukee. My first gyros, and a damn fine gyros at that. Had many there since.

Great topic!

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McDonald’s French Fries pre-1990

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Totally get that; those old-school fries hit different. Crispy, beef-tallow magic. Nothing’s been the same since.

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