...and the rumors mill about...

How do we not have snow on the ground? It wouldn't be the first time we've gone without a white christmas, but negligable snowfall -- the kind that doesn't even stick -- is not the kind of thing we've all grown to love and expect at this time of year. Hmm, perhaps there's really something to this global warming stuff, but we're far from a tropical paradise on this latitude. i think we're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. isn't this how all the great snow-ins of the last ten years started? while you're all waiting, here's some news.

Cantina Loco- again? -- yes, again. while i reported not so long ago that Loco had its license, a second round of reports -- misinformation? -- has come back to my ears which says that this is indeed not the case. which is strange, because it seems as if some folks at Loco had been disseminating contradictory stories. I've heard a tentative date of something like mid-December for Loco's open, and this was after i'd heard that the license was actually not yet in, as opposed to my first report. Let this be a lesson to you: this is just the way these things go. My thoughts are these: it is entirely possible the liquor license is, if not in hand, then in the mail. I am disinclined to believe the initial report was wrong, but Loco for one reason or another, can't open yet. It also says something that an individual that Loco's hired has in the meantime, been working at SeaBar -- i take it to mean they're close. Really close. Often it's the most minor of things that can keep a restaurant from opening. after a quick visit there, what i'd overheard was that it is a further construction delay in the dining room. if the interior of the place turns out half as cool as their sign indicates it might be, i say take your time and do it right.

Cozumel -- the question no one seemed to ask -- when i'd first heard Cantina Loco was a Mexican/Tequila bar opening on the corner of Elmwood and Allen, my initial thought was...isn't there already a Mexican/Tequila bar, like, a half a block away? Seemed like a weird business move, but knowing that Andrzejewski was involved, i think people took it on faith that Loco would be of such great quality there was nothing to worry about, even from a long standing Elmwood mainstay like Cozumel. or, perhaps, the guys at Loco knew something the rest of us didn't. It seems Cozumel is in its last throes, and has been showing signs that it is facing an imminent but unspecified closing date. Apparently, in fact, it has been closed the last few days, though i haven't been that way recently enough to check. it is supposed to be opening back up today (we'll see) but despite that rumor, a mexican joint that has run out of the mexican basics, and can't pay their employees doesn't have long...especially when that monster opens down the street...

'Hucklebottles' -- okay, okay, i know that's not what the restaurant is going to be called...but if it is, i want royalties. a few more bits of info have come down the pipe since the last post. what i've been told is that Tutu's restaurant concept involves some variation on the noodle bar model. As at Hucklebuckets, the money half of 'Hucklebottles' enterprise will again be Scott Weinstein, and apparently they are looking for a move to a city location, perhaps to provide for them a customer base that a suburban location couldn't. while i am not at all certain what location they've had in mind -- things tend to get garbled in the game of drunken telephone that we play in the service industry -- it sounds as if the 'Hucklebottles' guys have been looking at the old Blu Martini location, on the corner of Main and Goodell. to that i say well done -- the facility looks great, and that block of Main street could use decent place to eat.