Robert C. wrote: > > John G. wrote: > >Gee, we finally had ourselves a pretty good Italian > >restaurant here on the (upper part) of the North Shore. > >But it didn't last. > > > >Taormina's was the old Surf restaurant, in Magnolia > >a nice little sea-side village on route 127. > > > >It's the 2nd or 3rd time this place has failed in the past > >five years. > > > >too bad, because the food was pretty good and the owners > >gave it a hell of a try. The chef was the brother of Jimmy > >Burke (I'm told) who owns the outstanding Tuscan Grille > >in Waltham. > > > >The North Shore restaurant scene is not exactly booming these > >days. > > While this may well be true, I don't know if the failures at the > Taormina site are particularly good evidence of that general > statement. The location isn't near much of anything; tourists are only > likely to be in that part of Magnolia/Manchester to look at scenery, > which means they're not likely to be there around > dinnertime. Restaurants in downtown Gloucester (Main Street in > particular) seem to do OK, although I suspect there's a natural law of > some sort that predicts that there will always be one too many for > them all to survive. :-) I lived literally next door to the Surf in the late '80s. Across the street from it is (still, I think) the Edgewater Cafe, a small place serving Mexican cuisine. The Edgewater was always packed, but the Surf had very erratic activity. I never had food in the Surf, but I hung out there a few times in the bar with a neighbor. It was a seedy place, and seemed to have been that way for some time. I suspect its size may be a liability these days. The Edgewater is small, and doesn't need an army to keep busy, whereas the Surf is a large, rambling place, perhaps designed for big crowds, wedding parties, etc. It's an old place too, built maybe before 1929. I think the level of activity around there has changed over the years. I lived in a converted summer cottage, one of several, that originally were used only as summer rentals, just across the line in Manchester. The whole area is now populated with permanant residents, and the location is an area that outsiders would only find by accident. There is little or no public parking available anywhere around there, and there is nothing to draw people into the area, which is pretty remote. It's a beautiful area, with the beach, the rocky cliffs, and the sound of the rolling waves, but it's a terrible location for an off the street business that can't be maintained by locals. The structure is really a white elephant these days. Perhaps its eventual fate is to be turned into condos, but even the market for that is questionable.
Massachusetts