Greg Salisbury

Wow, that's a lot of interest in my neighborhood! I don't know how to use the feature that lets you pull quotes for replies, so bear with me. Sara, that totally blows my mind that Gary, the owner of Epicurean was badmouthing me. Maybe it's just me, but you never, ever talk smack about another place. Bad, bad karma, Gary. But now that he's closed... One of the reasons I opened for brunch was because of a meal I had at Epicurean when I first moved to the neighborhood. Actually, it was a meal I never had - 45 minutes just to get our order taken (it was busy but not slammed), another 10 for coffee, and then when I tried to talk to Gary about it, his response was, "do you still want your food or not?" I said no, and then he brought me a bill for the coffee! So I got the sense that there was a niche to be filled. And he had the cojones to try to get me to buy his business for 70k!. All right, now that I've gotten that off my chest: Katie, thanks for the welcome. Nice to be able to post on a site without fear of getting yanked. As for competition: I think the more the merrier. University City/West Philly is not really at teh top of most people's lists for dining meccas, so every new place that opens helps increase my visibility in an indirect way. You come to the neighborhood, have a good meal, see how beautiful it is around here, how easy it is to get to, how relatively plentiful parking is, and your mindset has changed to our benefit. And the area is far from maximum density. I think you'll see a few more places open up in the next two years, if they can find commercial space. That said, I tried the kaboberia that opened in the late, lamented American Diner space. Not as good as Kabobeesh, but it does have parking. There is a new bakery coming to 4908 Baltimore, called Sugar Hill Bakery, and a Caribbean cafe on 4500 block of Baltimore opening sometime in the next few months, owners used to have the bakery in the Firehouse@50th/Baltimore. Supposedly a new coffee shop opening next to Koch's on the 4300 block of Locust. The University City haunt I miss the most is Boccie - gourmet pizza back in the late 80s, opened by the guy who started Saladalley, Mike Kalina, and Leslie, the lady who opened Pizzazz pizzeria.

Talked a few times with the landlord, Mr. Lee. Used to be in the biz, but got out in favor of real estate. He is rehabbing the space (quickly, too!) for his brother and sister to operate. Look, even if it's just average Vietnamese, it is a quantum leap in use of space from Campus epicurean (only open for weekend brunch) to a place that the owner assures me will be open all week long. For me, if it falls somewhere between Vietnam Palace/Pho Ha, I'll be very, very happy.