It's rare that one looks at an empty building in one's neighborhood and expresses the fervent desire that it become a bank, but news that the Riese Organization plans to turn the vacant shell that was Union Square's Zen Palate into a TGI Friday's engenders exactly that kind of yearning deep in the collective breast of everyone who resides on that sceptered intersection. It's not bad enough that we're about to be inundated with Nordstrom's cut-rate shmattes; we should also suffer from the mutated abomination that is BBQ Pork Ravioli Bites? It makes one nostalgic for the inducement to suicide that was Bradlee's.
Monday, August 17, 2009
30
"...while many chefs in the district purchase food from the popular green market there, T.G.I. Friday's will not join them, says Mr. Riese. 'We are not that type of restaurant...'"
Now now. I'm sure we can freeze a lot of that greenmarket food, ship it once around the globe to let it thaw, and by the time it gets back it should be juuuust about right.
If those farmers want that business, they better start growing Extreme Fajita Poppers in Sweet Jack Daniels Sauce.
How about throw an OTB up in that bitch while they are at it. You ever notice how the city's grey-skinned, cigarette chainsmoking lowlives magnetically gravitate towards OTB and, we cannot fail to note, KFC?
It's uncanny.
I may become a crazy person (ha, become) and picket this place.
Why start now? While the tourist nazi blitzkrieg has turned New York's once localized charm into an amalgamated nanny-state of soulless franchise Americana, it has been achieved with the applausing support of Vichy Manhattanites.
This from the defender of JC Penneys.
I was defending the facts about JC Penny's, which Cintra didn't felt were annoying because her rant worked better without them. And, taking up the anti-franchise battle NOW... well, it's a little like Bush at the end of his presidency being all "let's stop torturing."
"feel"
scratch. Nevermind. Derrrrrrr
I will picket it solely based on their orange-and-white motif.
Can't that fall under Giuliani's quality of life legislation? visual noise?
red and white.
Is it really? Wow.
What am I thinking of? Hooters? Ruby Tuesday? Does it matter?
yeah. hooter has a lot of orange. Orange Julius?
Orange Julius, if only.
I'm composing Obama a pleading letter as we speak. Or rather, just as soon as I finish typing this. ('speak.')
I'm sorry, this is all my fault. I finally ate at Zen Palate and said out loud: "Wow, soy protein is actually kind of tasty!" They were closed the next day.
I hated Zen Palate. VERY MUCH. I guess I shouldn't fret about this.
No Friday's takeover will ever be grosser than its takeover of the space that used to be Gage & Tollner.
Perfect location to capitalize on the overflow. From Times Square.
I was already nostalgic for Bradlee's. I outfitted my first linen "closet" in New York from that place, probably for around $25 total. There was something about seeing the hordes of Brooklyn-bound Bradlee's bags on the subway that felt like solidarity...
Union Flair.
Ha!
The TGIF's on Thompkins Square is about 18 months away.
It's gunna face some fierce competition from the st marks place cracker barrel.
I'm sure the 1,000,000,000 cockroaches who inhabited Zen Palate will be rebranded as "Cajun Poppers."
breaded and deep-fried, of course.
"Miss, miss! Do ALL the buffalo wings have tails?"
I remember Kleins and Mays. When the park was rather shifty. The pool hall, filled with old men. And you had a clear view of the clock tower.
That is all.
Rick Pitino adamantly denies any interest in the Knicks head coaching job.