Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Guest Post: King Cong

OK guys and gals, this is BIG!

So it turns out that Than Merrill, a regular Mitt Romney if I've ever seen one, was not simply content with creating the first fresh-mex restaurant in New Haven- Mexicali Grille. Of course I am not going to rehash the debate as to whether Mexicali was really fresh-mex or if J Cong's corporate raider-style takeover conversion into the Double B represented the true introduction of fresh-mex. Either way, everyone agrees that the Bulldog Cantina just kicked it up a whole notch and showed Cong-Dawg to be a veritable Lee Iacocca. Now Merrill, having been shown up by his successor, has decided to go back to the drawing board and enter the real estate world. Merrill has been so successful as a real estate magnate that he was featured on A&E's Flip This House. Well now King Cong is mad! So I gave him a forum to vent his anger and speak to the public right here on this blog:


With Beneficent Allah in Vienna, this is a perfect time to make some opera analogies. You see I am Mozart to Than Merrill's Salieri. He came first. He's got a certain workmanlike ability about him. He gets the job done. But what does he lack? Inspiration! Creativity! GENIUS!

Did Than Merrill think of adding a FOURTH type of salsa to complement Mild, Medium and Hot? No, sadly the patrons of Mexicali Grille went pico de gallo-less for months, just as the patrons of Vienna's Opera House went without the light, airy, ethereal touch of The Magic Flute for so long. The list of my innovations goes on- the Cantina, the exposed kitchen, the CNN Headline News with closed captions.

And like Salieri, Than Merrill has been trying to take me down. It seems Merrill was whispering scurrilous lies about me and my restaurant into the ear of extremely influential Play Magazine food critic Joe Scarpano just as Salieri poisoned the ear of Emperor Joseph II with lies about Mozart.

But now Merrill, having been vanquished in the art of restauranteurage, has decided to move on to Real Estate. I hesitate to stoop to the level of such a coward, but to show my range of abilities, I will try to get on Flip This House as well. Let me tell you something, for a guy whose living is basically "Flip This Quesadilla," I don't imagine expanding on the concept will be too hard.

Here is the bold strategy I am thinking of for this project:
1. Buy a dilapidated house on Dixwell
2. Fill the refrigerator with some premium GUAC from the Double B. I'm talking guac in every crevice of that thing- veggie crisper, shelves, butter drawer, you name it
3. Matter of fact, put some guac in the freezer too.
4. BOOM- Flip that house for twice the purchase price

2 comments:

Rich said...

i learned about the iraq war from that incredible CNN headline news feed

Tom said...

i've been saying "boom" a lot recently.