Quote:
Originally Posted by JakeNB
Only in Saint John. Word of an authentic Mexican restaurant comes out and place is immediately trashed because it’s not serving greasy grilled burgers.
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Not trashing it at all.....just commenting that it's opening is of little interest to me because I don't care for Mexican food. It had been rumoured that a diner or family style place might be going here and so this news was a bit disappointing.
It seems like almost every town and small city has an iconic old fashioned diner or unique family restaurant serving quality, homestyle comfort food. They've often been there for years and in many cases are being run by a second or even third generation. .....Think the type of places featured on the Food Network's "Diners, Drive ins and Dives" with Guy Fieri or the Canadian version that was called something like "You Gotta Eat Here"
Places like this are what I'm trying to describe...
https://mainediner.com/full-menu/ 
I find Saint John kind of odd in that we really don't have anything like that. The closest thing was probably Reggie's but it was really just a breakfast/lunch counter with some seating.(although I still miss it)
One the other end of the spectrum we also really don't have much n the "fine dining" category either.
I had a friend who had a hospitality industry supply business tell me one time that Saint John was a really tough environment for upscale restaurants because we had never developed a business lunch culture. It's tough for restaurants to cover costs on just a few nights a week of dinner service without the additional income from a strong lunch business.
An example of this was a place called the Continental that was in Market Square when it first opened in 83. It was European style fine dining and the food was amazing. It was busy on Friday and Saturday nights but it only lasted about 2 years. The owner moved to Charlottetown, opened a similar place and was hugely successful for 30 years until it closed upon his retirement. Different dining culture I guess?
My friend's theory at least partly blamed the Irving style business culture of "take 20 minutes to grab a sandwich and keep working"
