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With pizza under its Allston belt, Harvard tries sushi
By adamg on Wed, 03/23/2011 - 7:19pm
Eric Gittleman reports from the Allston Civic Association meeting tonight that Harvard wants to lease space in the Brighton Mills mall to a sushi place called Maki Maki. He says they won't be seeking a liquor license, so we probably won't see a repeat of the Stone Hearth unpleasantness.
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Comments
Price control
Asahi is just up the road in Brighton Center. It's not expensive, but it's not cheap either.
If this place can price itself right, then it'll probably be a great place to pick up sushi on the way home from work. It's more on my way than going all the way to Zen320 or Mr. Sushi in Brookline.
Again with the Kmart!
What is it with these people? The Crimson has a more detailed report, including this exhalation:
Sal, just get in your car and drive across the river to the Target already, will ya?
But keep reading the article. Seems Sal is upset at the prospect of a restaurant moving into a strip mall.
A lot of non residents used that Kmart as well.
What don't these people understand? You bring in a few businesses that can do well, and you will get other businesses that follow. As long as these businesses aren't porn shops or strip clubs, what harm are they going to do?
"outside the community"-- guffaw
Code for "people who weren't born here."
By all means, let's keep people from outside the neighborhood out of Allston-Brighton. What economic benefit could they possibly provide?
Just for kicks
If you google "Sal Pinchera" and "Allston", you'll notice a trend in the Google Previews...
"...but Sal Pinchera, another Allston resident..."
"...Sal Pinchera and other Allston residents dislike..."
"...Sal Pinchera had a lot of questions..."
"...Sal Pinchera disagrees..."
"...however, Sal Pinchera said..."
Way to bury the lead, Adam
:P
I'm glad you linked to the Crimson article. This isn't just "a sushi place" (which I would have assumed would open in the smaller space next to Brugger's Bagels or something). This is an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet! If it's anywhere near as good as Minado's in Natick...well, then I ain't drivin' all the way to Natick just for all-you-can-eat sushi any more!
I rarely ordered alcohol at Minado's so I don't see the lack of an alcohol license being a huge problem.
Also, regarding my earlier post:
Also:
HOLY CRAP, PINCHERA! Are you kidding me!? I swear to Neptune that the morons that go to the ACA meetings will cry about ANYTHING! You could propose to build a gilded hall filled with the finest artisanal foods for them to meet in and they'd complain that the wine wasn't made in Allston or something.
Have any of them ever SEEN Minado's on pretty much ANY night of the week? The place is packed! That's MONEY and PEOPLE coming into ALLSTON! That's what you should want, you morons!
Sal's right!
Kaz is exactly the kind of undesirable person that a sushi buffet would bring into the neighborhood.
But seriously, is there any way in the freakin' universe that a sushi place is going to be the size of a K-Mart? It's not a "one or the other" proposition, the way he seems to be putting it-- "Oh, great, now that a sushi place is going, we'll never get K-Mart back."
Minado's is pretty big
I don't have a good concept on how big of a restaurant holds 180 people, but Minado's is in a strip mall in Natick and is pretty wide and pretty deep with the back third of the place being the buffet area.
Got to be less than a K-Mart though, wouldn't you say?
That K-Mart wasn't one of the newer ginormous big-box stores (like the Target in Watertown) but still, I think of a 180-seat restaurant as being a lot smaller than even a smallish K-Mart.
A quick check of Google (upon which we can all rely for fact-checking) puts the Stockyards' capacity as 350 people, and the old Sports Depot at 330. Both reasonably big buildings, but both smaller than K-Mart.
I call for turning it into a local-restaurant food court: Sushi, barbecue, brewpub, vegan, what have you. Who's with me?
Maybe I was right to begin with
I figured it might go in the space that used to be a fabric/hobby store next door to Bruegger's Bagels on the Shaw's/Star Market side of the mall instead of in place of the K-Mart. (Who brought K-Mart up anyways? Sal the Crank? I don't recall anyone saying it would replace the K-Mart directly now that I think about it)
As I recall from Harvard's original plans, the rebuilt apartments were supposed to span the K-Mart space, but not necessarily go as far back into the lot as the supermarket building. That would explain how a 130 seat restaurant would fit better in the smaller lot next door to the bagel shop than in some partial segmentation of the K-Mart space AND fit with sticking around beyond when Harvard goes back into build mode on the rest of the lot.
Now. What I want to know is when this city is going to get an all-you-can-eat pizza place. I think they should put it in Allston.
Next to Petco
If you follow Adam's link to Eric Gittleman's tweets (in the original article up above) they say that Maki Maki will be going into a space to the right of the Petco, just off the Everett Street entrance to the parking lot.
So, what used to be next to Petco?
Was it the K-Mart? It wasn't OfficeMax -- that was on the other side of the parking lot.
No, not K-Mart
The right of Petco is....nothing? I had always assumed that all of Petco was Petco...but now that I think about it, it doesn't go that far right inside the door. So I have no idea what's over there currently. K-Mart was left of OfficeMax which was right on the NW edge of the lot next to Western Ave. Right of Bruegger's Bagels was Frugal Fannies (which is where I would have supposed it would go).
Then again, I did see a rendering of the apartment complex Harvard was proposing and it cuts into the front door of Frugal Fannies (but not all the way to the back wall)...so maybe over by Petco would be a better place for Harvard. They didn't have big plans for that side of the parking lot.
Petco's in most of the
Petco's in most of the building but they are consolidating into the front (Western Ave.) side of the store, freeing up space into which Maki Maki will move.
Another buffet
I noticed an all-you-can-eat sushi offer in Somerville when walking around over the weekend. I THINK it was Yoshi's on College Ave -- I think that was the only sushi place I walked by.
Many sushi places start with
Many sushi places start with an all-you-can-eat deal when they first open, and then switch to a-la-carte once business picks up. Is this place really going to stay all-you-can-eat?