Despite the sudden closure of its Richmond waterfront home in June, Rocky Island Oyster Co. is set to make a comeback later this year — this time as the Salty Pearl. The Mercury News reports that owner Danny Pirello will relaunch his restaurant under its new name at 550 Second Street in Oakland’s Jack London Square.
The new location is expected to open in September or October, depending on beverage license approval, according to the newspaper. The Salty Pearl will be shucking a mix of East and West Coast oysters, of course, but with the move comes the ability to expand the menu offerings, Pirello says.
Another popular San Francisco coffee shop has closed
Along with the news that Philz will soon shut down its original 24th Street location in the Mission, comes word that another popular cafe has closed its doors: Caffe Centro in South Park shut down as of Friday, July 28, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Owner Tom Buswell says business hadn’t returned with employees working from home, and the cafe has only seen 30 percent of its pre-pandemic activity. After a break-in two weeks ago, Buswell decided against renewing the lease on the cafe. In a twist of good news, however, the Chronicle reports that a group of Centro employees want to bring the cafe back. Stay tuned.
Now we know who’s been keeping the Vital Vittles legacy alive
Despite the well-publicized closure of the long-running bakery Vital Vittles in 2022, the Berkeley bread maker has been quietly continuing on, supplying loaves to Berkeley Bowl and Rainbow Grocery. Now, we know who’s been keeping the Vital Vittles legacy alive: Altamirano Restaurant Group bought the bakery, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Known for restaurants Mochica in San Francisco and La Costanera in Half Moon Bay, this new arm of the restaurant group dubbed Alta Mira Baking Co. is baking bread for its own restaurants and wholesale accounts, as well as continuing the Vital Vittles bread line. The business is currently wholesale only, with plans to open a retail counter next year at the San Pablo Avenue bakery in Berkeley.
Here’s a drink deal for striking writers and actors in San Francisco
With the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild both calling for a strike this summer, budgets can be tight. But San Francisco cafe That’s My Jam is offering a thoughtful gesture: Every Friday, the cafe will have half-price lattes for WGA and SAG union members until a contract is reached, the cafe shared in a Threads post. “As Michael Scott said on The Office, ‘A good manager doesn’t fire people,” the post reads. “He hires people and inspires people. People. And people will never go out of business.”
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August 04, 2023
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Richmond’s Rocky Island Oyster Co. to Reopen in Oakland’s Jack London Square - Eater SF
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I was breastfeeding my baby in the cafe of a Dunelm store in west London. Almost immediately a staff member came over and told me that I might be more comfortable in the feeding room downstairs which had a comfortable armchair. She kept repeating this which made me feel unwelcome, so I moved. This turned out to be a baby changing room with a toilet. My baby ended up missing his feed and I was a bit thrown. I understand my rights as a breastfeeding mother and felt bad for not advocating for the both of us. TT, London
You told me the staff member mentioned that you were welcome to remain in the cafe, but kept pushing the feeding-room option. She may have been well-intentioned, but it’s understandable you felt pressured.
Under the Equalities Act, it’s illegal to move, harass or discriminate against a breastfeeding mother. Dunelm says: “We were very surprised to hear of this customer’s experience in our Greenford store and want to immediately apologise for any distress caused.
“Customers are more than welcome to breastfeed in our Pausa cafes, or any other suitable area in our stores, and there is definitely no policy to encourage customers to feed in the changing room instead.” The company says it would be reminding all staff of the guidance and invited you and a companion to return to the store for a free meal and a meeting with the manager. You have accepted.
CHRISTIANSBURG — Barring some intervention, a historic property downtown appears to be losing another business.
The Blue Ridge Fudge Lady Cafe in Christiansburg has announced on social media that it will, as of now, not be reopening.
“We are looking for someone to either partner with or take over the space with a similar type restaurant,” the business wrote in a Facebook post that also highlighted other points such as the fact the kitchen is certified by the health department and that the equipment could be purchased.
The cafe in Christiansburg had opened its doors inside the building at 4 W. Main St. just this past December. The Blue Ridge Fudge Lady had replaced another popular eatery, the Mockingbird Cafe, which itself closed about a year ago after spending years in that spot and developing a dedicated following across Montgomery County.
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The Blue Ridge Fudge Lady includes an online component and the closure appears to affect the entire business. One person, responding to the recent post on Facebook, asked “Is this is just the café closing or Blue Ridge Fudge Lady altogether?”
The business replied with: “Yes. It is everything. The café is my only location/business.”
Owner Robin Burdette previously said the online component became popular in its own right after her shop received some national news coverage several years ago.
Fox Business had been working on a series in 2018 that focused on local businesses that were based in rural communities and played an active role in the areas they served.
Through a long-time friend and former classmate, Burdette was put in contact with a reporter at the news outlet. Her business, which operated a Pulaski-based shop at the time, was spotlighted in an article titled “Blue Ridge Fudge Lady: A veteran with a lot of sweetness, a whole lotta gumption.”
Burdette previously said the business operated exclusively online for nearly two years before she opened the Christiansburg shop. She had closed the Pulaski store in early 2021 following the end of its lease and as she, and a great number of small businesses, grappled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Burdette hasn’t returned a request for comment on the closure of the Christiansburg cafe.
The business owner, however, did upload a video on Facebook in June and she addressed the cafe’s plans at the time.
Burdette brought up her employment with the U.S. Department of Defense. She told The Roanoke Times during an interview last year that she’s a cybersecurity engineer and served as a cryptologist after joining the Navy in 2000.
“My side gig is the Blue Ridge Fudge lady,” she said in the June 21 Facebook clip. “I have to travel for them [DOD] on an important mission from June to the end of July, so I will be gone. I thought I had a great plan to keep the fudge shop open.”
Burdette said she shrunk the menu, limited the ingredients and even had plans for a baker.
“That blew up in my face yesterday. The baker’s not able to be here for a weeks,” she said. “So anyway, I leave in a couple days and I have to shut the fudge shop down until I come back the first week in August.”
Burdette said she wouldn’t have made that decision if there wasn’t another urgent matter at hand. She also voiced her gratitude for the support the shop has received and asked that patrons keep her and her peers in their thoughts and prayers as they travel for the government.
COVINGTON, Ky. — A restaurant that has called MainStrasse home for 39 years closed up shop after Fourth of July weekend, said a representative of the Covington Economic Development Department.
Located at 529 Main St., the space for Dee Felice Cafe currently has a sign in the window advertising its availability for rent. The cafe’s social media accounts are deactivated. Its website is no longer operational.
Opened in 1984, Dee Felice Cafe served New Orleans-style cuisine and offered live jazz performances. The cafe was founded by Shelly DeFelice-Nelson and her father, a jazz musician who performed under the stage name Dee Felice — the restaurant’s namesake.
In 2021, the cafe was taken over by local restaurant entrepreneur DJ Thomas, who maintained the name and menu.
Their menu included Cajun offerings such as barbecued shrimp, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, fried catfish sandwiches and shrimp po’ boys.
The building was initially constructed in 1860. DeFelice Properties LLC purchased the property for $675,000 in 1998, according to Kenton County property records. Before Dee Felice, a pharmacy operated out of the building.
Dee Felice Market, a community grocery store next door to the cafe, will remain in business. The market was founded in 2021 to answer the cafe’s multiple closures in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commercial real estate firm NIA Bergman is in charge of advertising the space. NIA Bergman represented Dee Felice Cafe when they initially leased the space to Thomas.
The spot is a prime location within the MainStrasse Village. The district is a hotspot for dining and nightlife in Covington. The building is located directly across the street from Lisse Steakhuis and adjacent to Cock And Bull.
Dee Felice Cafe ownership could not be reached for comment at this time.
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MainStrasse staple Dee Felice Cafe closes after nearly four decades - WCPO 9 Cincinnati
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The days are numbered for The Yard at Wilton Manors, home to The Alchemist Cafe and other eateries, at least as it lingers in your memory: the welcoming ramshacklery and coffee-scented authenticity that has defined many a languorous weekend morning that became afternoon.
Sequestered off Northeast 13th Avenue, an unremarkable side street near busy Five Points, The Alchemist and its neighbors at The Yard are not just a hidden gem, but perhapsthehidden gem in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Now is not the time for a eulogy for The Yard, but a call to enjoy this distinctive space while we may.
Within 10 months, a developer expects to demolish the property to make way for a six-story residential project that will include 190 apartments and a parking garage for more than 300 vehicles, as well as a dog park, about 8,500 square feet of retail-restaurant space and a public terrace.
Called Generation Wilton Manors, the 3.5-acre development by Bal Harbour-based Kaplan Residential will cover The Yard, an adjacent former lumber yard and several properties just south of The Yard on Northeast 24 Street. The project is in the last stages of approval, with a final vote by the city commission likely on Aug. 22.
Kaplan Residential president Morris Kaplan calls the project a “labor of love” and has pledged to try to recreate the atmosphere of The Yard at Generation Wilton Manors. He has invited The Yard’s three restaurants — The Alchemist, La Mexicana Taco Bar and Voo La Voo Café — to reopen in the new buildings.
Kaplan said he first visited The Yard while scouting locations for the project in Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale about five years ago.
“I was very impressed. It was very bohemian, an eclectic, cool place, the way people are just hanging out. It’s something, that vibe, you really don’t see anyplace else,” he said.
Kaplan said he has more recently toured the property with project consultants and told them: “When we rebuild, let’s try our best to replicate this as best we can.”
Fans of The Yard are not convinced it is possible to revive such an organic environment — The Yard literally began as a plant nursery — within the steel-and-glass bubble of a modern residential development.
“We’ll see, but you’d have to be pretty skeptical,” said Jane Darrow, 24, of Fort Lauderdale, seated outside The Alchemist recently. “This is such a special place, warts and all.”
Kaitlyn Berry, a 19-year-old college student from Fort Lauderdale, said she discovered The Alchemist on Pinterest and Instagram in middle school and encouraged her mom to take a gang of her friends there.
“It’s so sad. It’s a condo buying what’s a Fort Lauderdale staple, you know?” Berry said, seated in front of a Nutella Slicer, one of The Alchemist’s signature, open-faced sandwiches. It’s the same thing she’s ordered since seventh grade.
‘It’s magical’
Carlos Cruz, a managing partner at The Alchemist, said he and business partner Bruce Brill are planning to make the move to the new building. But he does have deep affection for the quirky space the restaurant has occupied for more than a decade, its former life as a brick and paver shop illustrated on the uneven, mismatched floor.
The magic is in the imperfections, Cruz said.
“Everybody has the same reaction. First timers, they come in here and they say, ‘Oh, my god, this is beautiful.’ Maybe they are expecting glass and steel, like Starbucks. They say, ‘This reminds me of Montana. This reminds me of Switzerland.’ Everywhere there is a corner in here that will remind these people of places they came from. It’s amazing. It’s magical,” Cruz said.
Carlos Cruz, a managing partner at The Alchemist in Wilton Manors, says the beloved restaurant will reopen in a new residential development planned for the site. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Cruz fell under its spell six years ago, when he visited while on hiatus from his job as a TV producer for Telemundo. He soon was asking Brill if he wanted a partner.
“It reminds me a lot of Puerto Rico. I grew up in places like this, all broken down. It was Puerto Rico for me,” Cruz said.
With an eye for set design, Cruz is planning to salvage many of the elements that give The Alchemist its signature warmth, especially the sections of old wood that line the walls, to decorate the new restaurant.
The Alchemist Café is beloved for its coffee and a relaxing vibe. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Cruz is hoping to keep The Alchemist open, even during construction, by temporarily moving the operation to a small house on the southeast corner of the property, augmented by a food truck. Kaplan acknowledged that option is under discussion.
Conversations with customers about the changes coming to The Alchemist are emotional, Cruz admitted.
“They get mad. They get frustrated,” he said. “But they are so happy when they know that we are not going anywhere.”
La Mexicana Taco Bar owner Diva Namé acknowledges that her customers are “extremely sad” about changes coming to The Yard at Wilton Manors. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The owner of La Mexicana Taco Bar, Diva Namé, is sanguine about leaving the building. The property was in need of frequent repair — Kaplan recently reroofed the building and repaired the sign out front that was damaged by storms — so she’s looking forward to being in a new space.
Namé was one of the first retail tenants at The Yard, running a juice bar before expanding into an adjoining space and opening a restaurant dedicated to the Mexican cuisine she loved while working in the industry in New York. (Namé was raised in Colombia by a Jewish father and Lebanese mother.)
She is hopeful that La Mexicana will have a home in Generation Wilton Manors, but also is working to create a second location nearby that would be open before she has to vacate The Yard. Namé shares her customers’ regrets about losing “the experience” of The Yard as it exists today.
“Definitely they are extremely sad. There is people that have been coming here for years,” she said. “We’ve been trying to explain to people that … the project is going to be good. That they can come back when the project is done. But at the end, of course, it’s going to be different.”
The influence of Frida Kahlo can be found both inside and out at La Mexicana Taco Bar in The Yard at Wilton Manors. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
‘We like to explore’
The Yard was created in 2012, then known as Eucalyptus Gardens, with remnants of that history seen as an umbrella-lined asphalt walkway, undulating over tree roots, gives way to a gravel path where overhead garden lights become more sparse.
Many visitors to The Yard do not venture to the back of the property, which is a shame. Along the path is a rustic enclosure for Doris the tortoise and Lola’s Market, a weekends-only indoor shopping maze of nostalgic home goods, fashion items and thoughtfully curated kitsch.
The path ends at an abandoned, roofless concrete structure covered in murals, including one depicting the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victims. Other prominent murals honor the LGBT community and Deputy Shannon Bennett, a gay deputy in the Broward County Sheriff’s Office who died in the early days of COVID.
A path leads to the back of The Yard, where an abandoned building is decorated with murals. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Calling the works “important to the community,” Kaplan has pledged to preserve them for display at Generation Wilton Manors. The most likely scenario, he said, includes creating large digital images of the murals that would be transferred onto new walls on the site.
Taking selfies toward the back of the property, Tanha Fiza, 19, of Coral Springs, said she and best friend Manar Elsayed came to The Alchemist after seeing pictures in friends’ Instagram stories.
“We like to explore. We liked the aesthetic of it as well, how they decorated it and everything. I thought it was really cool,” Fiza said. “The food is good, too. I really liked the coffee.”
Fiza was disappointed to learn The Yard would be torn down and plans to return before that happens.
“People who enjoy coming to The Alchemist, the food, the vibe, the happiness they get coming here, it’s all gonna be gone,” she said. “You just see buildings everywhere [in South Florida], so it’s nice to be able to come to a place, cute places like this, that you want to come and explore. There’s not many like that.”
A few steps away, a mural that Namé painted on the side of La Mexicana a few years ago displays words from artist Frida Kahlo: “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”
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The Alchemist restaurant in Wilton Manors to be demolished - South Florida Sun Sentinel
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Up to eight carts are allowed to operate for one year in four locations on Decatur Square, with two additional locations in Harmony Park and one each along East and West Ponce de Leon avenues. The food cart program is meant to offer more grab-and-go food options for residents and visitors of Decatur and provide affordable opportunities for small food businesses.
This is the first mobile venture for Ken and Jeannette Katz, the owners of former downtown Atlanta Salvadorian restaurant Buenos Dias Cafe and restaurant pop-up the Window and La Bodega at the Met in Adair Park. A portion of the menu from Buenos Dias Cafe is offered at La Bodega on Atlanta’s west side, including its popular pupusas and guava pastries paired with coffee and fresh-pressed juices. Look for the Buenos Dias Cafe food cart at Harmony Park in the Oakhurst neighborhood.
Dessert cart Icing on the Cake will serve cupcakes and slices of pie and cheesecake along West Ponce de Leon Avenue near Truist Bank, while popsicle purveyor King of Pops will set up its colorful cart marked by the signature rainbow umbrella on the sidewalk near East Court Square.
The establishment of a permanent mobile food vendor program also ushers in the return of King of Pops to the city, a regular vendor in Decatur Square prior to the pandemic and the kerfuffle caused by a food cart pilot program launched by Decatur in 2019. The pilot program allowed food carts in the square and Harmony Park, but no longer allowed vendors like King of Pops to operate in either location if the business was in direct competition with similar nearby businesses, which at the time included Steel City Pops in downtown Decatur.
An investigation by Decaturish later revealed the city took steps to show favoritism toward Steel City Pops, freezing out King of Pops. The report included the review of more than 400 public records highlighting how the city appeared to promote Steel City over King of Pops. Records from the city date back to 2017, the year Steel City opened in Decatur. Steel City Pops closed a few months before the start of the pandemic.
Food cart operating hours: Monday - Thursday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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Decatur Green-Lights Three Food Carts, Including King of Pops and Buenos Dias Cafe - Eater Atlanta
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