Archive for May 11th, 2011

Investigative reporting!

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

We were planning to try out Dominick’s Italian Restaurant in Lakeway this weekend. Dominick’s was formerly known as Ciola’s, but last year the Ciola family sold the restaurant. Lawrence was going to call ahead for reservations, but told me this afternoon that he didn’t get any answer when he called the phone seemed to be disconnected.

We had not seen this report from Rob Balon’s web site:

…[The owner] has decided to return to Kansas.

And I was in kind of a foul mood (for reasons unrelated to dining) and figured a drive out to Lakeway and dinner at Pao’s would help. (It didn’t, much.) Since Dominick’s was on the way, I could see for myself what was going on.

What was going on was that there was a lockout notice on the door, dated May 6, 2011, from a lawyer who apparently represents the former owners. It looks like Dominick’s was subleasing the space from the owners of Ciola’s (who, one can assume, are making their own lease payments to the owners of the space), and were locked out because they owed the following:

  • $6,015.63 for May 2011 rent.
  • $645.82 for April 2011 water bill.
  • $2,882.64 as payment on a promissory note for April 2010.
  • $6,382.64 as payment on a promissory note for May 2010.
  • $278,420.16 as payment on a promissory note for July 2010 (!)

So apparently, Dominick’s has owed over a quarter of a million dollars for close to a year (according to Balon, the sale took place in July of 2010), Ciola’s let the money go this long, and finally moved to shut them down on one of the busiest dining out nights of the week. Interesting.

Also interesting is the amount of money. $275,000+ is a lot of money. As Lawrence put it, “Christ, for a quarter-million you should be able to easily open up your own restaurant just about anyplace but downtown Manhattan…”. I’ll admit to not being an expert on the restaurant business, but certainly $250,000 seems like it should be enough to open a restaurant, especially if you’re using an existing restaurant space (one that doesn’t need to be renovated to be brought up to code). And that’s just the amounts that were not paid; we have no idea how much money changed hands before signatures were affixed to contracts.

I’m not blogging this because I want to poke fun at either the new or old owners; I have some sympathy for both parties. But I think this is blog worthy for the insight it provides into restaurant economics. $6,000 a month for a moderately sized space in Lakeway? $650 a month just for water? How much spaghetti do you have to sell to bring in that kind of money?

(Oh, yeah: the new owners never bothered to change the large sign out in front of the center that said “Ciola’s”, though they did change the name on the awning in front of the building.)

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Johnny’s been hurt. He’s been hurt bad.

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Continuing on with the 70’s crime film theme, a group of us watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle over this past weekend.

My own reaction to the movie is somewhat skewed. I’d read the book fairly recently, and thought it was fantastic. William Landay’s writeup for The Rap Sheet does a very good job of explaining everything I love about the book, particularly when he says

…Higgins is not interested in the mechanics of advancing the plot, really. He is interested in the characters and the world they inhabit.

(Charlie Stella also has a nice tribute to Higgins at the same site.)

I think that my fondness for the novel colors my view of the movie. Peter Yates made one of the most faithful adaptations of a novel I’ve ever seen: pretty much every scene and every line is straight out of the book. (There are only three significant exceptions I can think of; the scene where Coyle delivers the guns to the trailer is cut short. Cutting that scene short sets up the final scene in the movie, which has a similarly nihilistic, but different, ending. There’s also a scene with Coyle and his wife that I think was inserted to make him somewhat more sympathetic.)

I got the impression that Lawrence and the other viewers were not as impressed, and I can see why. Like Mean Streets, Friends is very much a “slice of life” film. There’s more action in Friends, and I think much more going on in general. But the heart of both the movie and book is the window they give into the life of this small-time hustler, trying to make a living and stay one step ahead of the law but failing at both.

I loved the movie. Your mileage may vary.

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: Here’s Roger Ebert’s original review of the movie.

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