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Super Bowl LIC-style & R40 Restaurant Opens

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John Brown Smokehouse
Land of the Burnt Ends, Home of The Chiefs

My usual Super Bowl routine is a Swanson Salisbury Steak Dinner washed down with a quartet of cosmopolitans. According to the label this meal provides 43% of the saturated fat and 31% of the sodium that my body requires every day and a lesson in chemistry I didn’t pass in high school.

Or I could amble down to John Brown Smokehouse where …Whoa, this place is jam-packed with crazed football fans decked out in red and white, didn’t realize this was the NYC meeting place for Niner fans! Looks like I will be trekking back to my ground floor hovel in an unglamorous stretch of LIC near the Mongolian border to watch the Bay City Niners battle Shakira ‘KC’ Lopez.

[Read more…] about Super Bowl LIC-style & R40 Restaurant Opens

LONG ISLAND CITY 2019 RESTAURANT ROUND-UP

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Going down the ruta and feelin’ bad

Goin’ where the chilly winds don’t blow
Goin’ where the chilly winds don’t blow
Goin’ where those chilly winds don’t blow
I don’t want to be treated this away

IF ever I give consideration to opening a restaurant in LIC/NYC, I need but utter three words to myself and the inspiration will instantly dissipate: Mothership Meat Company.  The lengthy timetable for getting this restaurant open in Dutch Kills is enough to crush any prospect of a decent IRR, not to mention a BBQ-lover’s soul.

Thus, I have decided to list all three returnees from last year in the Coming Soon category as opposed to the “Not-So-Soon” category in the hopes that their dreams, and ours, will be realized.

Despite Amazon’s not-so-imminent arrival and the bounty of retail space being created at the ground level of the many towers going up, there have been surprisingly [Read more…] about LONG ISLAND CITY 2019 RESTAURANT ROUND-UP

WHAT’S WRONG WITH RETAIL IN LONG ISLAND CITY?

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Of course then there's...
Of course then there’s…

And if you say to me tomorrow,
Oh what fun it all would be
Then what’s to stop us, pretty baby,
But what is and what should never be

Given all the empty storefronts, anyone walking along Vernon Boulevard might wonder how Long Island City is the fastest growing city in the nation.  Of course excessive retail vacancies abound through many stretches of Manhattan as well, and “retailing” as a concept is under siege nationwide due to Amazon.

One of the problems lies with the entrepreneurs who start these businesses. [Read more…] about WHAT’S WRONG WITH RETAIL IN LONG ISLAND CITY?

CORNER BISTRO 2.0

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All this and the Stones in the background
All this and the Stones in the background

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Unlike directly across the East River, nothing really newsworthy occurred in Long Island City this week and I was pretty much resigned to publishing a single post with a photo and links to others tepid news.  Then I passed the Corner Bistro, and like Wimpy I couldn’t resist popping my head in for a burger, as it’s always been a magnet for me time immemorial.  Lo and behold what did I find – the classic joint had undergone a renovation.

Furthermore signs announcing “Corner Bistro Reboot” indicated a revamped menu would commence on October 1.  So I spoke with Elizabeth McGrath, daughter of the owners of the original Corner Bistro on West 4th Street, Bill & Lorraine O’Donnell.  She told me that in addition to the traditional and current hamburger-centric offering, the LIC location would [Read more…] about CORNER BISTRO 2.0