This place just opened recently called Lou’s Bodega. There is no Lou. It’s not a Nuyorican/Dominican bodega or mini grocery store. It’s not a wine bar (bodega means wine shop in Iberian Spanish). It’s a kind of “cafe” or lite-eats place with coffee. They have pricy coffees, granola and yoghurt, breakfast tacos, sandwiches, salads, etc. They do have beer and wine on the menu. The space is taken over from a tire shop in what was a mostly Mexican-American and Mexican neighborhood that has been gentrified. The Lou’s Bodega owners kept some Chicano-pride Aztec imagery that was done in mural form on the original tire shop, plus they added some more ‘Aztec inspired’ imagery of their own. So the impression is that they want the place to have a Mexican ‘flavor’. But it’s called bodega, which in Mexican Spanish means a storage warehouse. It’s like they just liked the exotic word bodega and the exotic Aztec imagery but they are using them completely out of context to make their cafe look more ‘colorful.’ I guess ‘bodega’ sounds more interesting than ‘cafe’ even when it is being used inaccurately, but I don’t like the place’s name.
Keene, New Hampshire is in a kerfuffle because of a new Asian noodle restaurant called Pho Keene. This is true.
I once saw a photo of a restaurant in Germany with a sign saying “Restaurant Zur Puke”.
How about the Doo Dee Restaurant and Bar. i haven’t been
Wow, my mileage varies for sure. I love Kinky Friedman’s books so I hate to rank food vs prose, but I’ve always liked Big Wong’s. In recent years I don’t think we ever get anything but the roast duck and the soups or congee. What did you not like (bracing myself)
I ordered whatever it was that Kinky always ordered there - from memory that’s roast pork over rice. It just didnt have the flavour of the char sui I can eat in the Chinatown at home. So it wasnt an active dislike, just a bit of disappointment - but, of course, we hadnt really gone for the food but the experience of visiting.
This is not the real name of a restaurant, but what I thought due to my ignorance of Spanish:
Passing a dumpster at the back of a restaurant, I thought the restaurant name must be “Basura Solemente”. Until I saw the dumpster next to it labelled “Reciclaje Solemente”.
Oh no. The restaurant is not, in fact, named “Garbage Only”. Good thing, that.
Ended up in the wrong area of Reading, PA this summer and passed by a Chinese takeout joint called “Wok and Roll”. I thought it was genius, but apparently they didn’t wok hard enough as they were out of business.
Meanwhile my former hometown of Hazlet NJ has Fuku Sushi.
Used to be a family restaurant on Route 20, I believe, in central New York State called The Squat and Gobble. (Fried fish, French fries w/gravy, jello).
Wonder if it’s still there. Is that a quote or something??
Oy. Replying to myself. Went to google map to check & down the rabbit hole! Many meanings, most of them, ugh.
The S&G I remember was Old School, not hipster. I mean — sitting in the booth, you felt enjoined to. . . fill your pie hole?
And yet they encourage noodling!
I particularly enjoy the sign advertising doody burgers.
I’m going to be checking out Mission BBQ . if I don’t go back to Canyon Fork River.
Went to Caney Fork River today. Catfish and wings. I will probably go back for fried green tomatoes.
Didn’t end up going, and now that I read the post in context, sorry; not sorry.
There are several branches of a “Squat and Gobble” in SF.
