Doomed Restaurants
One location, so many unlucky businesses
Is there an unlucky restaurant location in the place you live? Growing up in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, I remember a few of them. It can be hard to recall all the different places that occupied these spots—no restaurant seemed to last more than one or two years. I remember four such locations, and when I spent a week in New Jersey last fall to gather material for this newsletter, I checked them out. They’re all still standing, and it was fun trying remembering everything that had been there over the years.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, the “unlucky restaurant location.” There isn’t any common thread in these locations that should make them any unluckier than any other location (except for one, possibly.) I just find it curious that the turnover rate was so high for this handful of locations over so many years, and I’m curious if you’ve ever noticed a location like this wherever you live.
The first one is this old building right by the NJ Transit commuter train station in the small town of Whitehouse Station. You’d think people coming home from New York City might hop off the train and meet their spouse there for dinner, or something. It should be hopping.
Yet this seemingly prime location was Spiotta’s, then something else I believe, then Flamangos—a Kitchen Nightmares episode!—and then rebranded after the episode to The Junction. It’s now yet another restaurant, The Rail at Readington, which has survived for several years. I don’t think we ever tried any of them when I was kid; every time a place had been around long enough that my parents might have thought, hey let’s give it a try, it was gone!
The next one is this, along NJ-31 in Annandale.
When I was a kid, it was a Tex-Mex place called Kiki Rio’s, where we used to go sometimes. Then it became another Tex-Mex joint; then an American bistro-type place; then a pretty good barbecue restaurant, and then, after a long run, another American bistro-type place. I think I might be missing one in there, too.
Take a look at how heavily the newest owners remodeled it. Here it was as the barbecue restaurant. This is a screenshot from a neat Zillow posting I found, showing all the photos from the last time it went up for sale. It was apparently built in 1970, and like so many ordinary commercial buildings, has had a lot of lives, and must be home to a lot of livelihoods, commercial failures, and good memories.
It hasn’t been Kiki Rio’s in over 20 years, yet the internet still has these ghostly pages with that name, before internet reviews were even much of a thing. Where these pages come from, and how they’re generated, is probably a neat little story of its own.
Just a stone’s throw from here is the third unlucky location, at a sort of awkward intersection. This is the one where the location itself seems hard to spot or access. After cycling through four or five different restaurants, it’s now an athletic non-profit headquarters (in half the building), and a café/catering house in the other half. It’s been this way for years now; its life as a restaurant might be over. I didn’t pull in to this one for a photo even though I passed it, which might back up the impression that it feels inconvenient to get to.
Finally, there’s this one outside Flemington (next to a former hotdog restaurant that’s now a Coldwell Banker.) This is Flemington’s little fast food strip, and this was KFC for many years, when I was a kid. Then it became Chicken Addiction, was remodeled for Roy Rogers, was remodeled again for Slim Chickens, and is now vacant.
After the KFC, nothing stuck here, despite the building being remodeled twice, obviously at some expense. Here it was over the years, via Google Maps. KFC:
Chicken Addiction (already closed, and identical except for the removal of the trademark KFC logo):
Roy Rogers, after a major remodel:
Go back to the Slim Chickens photo, and you can see the Roy Rogers façade has been retained, but with the middle segment cladded in brick, and the gable added in front. Or perhaps Roy Rogers simply covered over the brick that was there in the KFC stage, and Slim Chickens made it visible again.
These are just a few bits and pieces of the commercial churn I saw growing up here, but beyond that, I’ve always been curious about the unlucky restaurant phenomenon. Drop a comment if you’ve seen this yourself!
Related Reading:
Iconic Hometown Restaurant, Obsolete Dining Concept?
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Kiki Rio was a dive bar in the 70’s & 80’s called “The Longhorn Saloon”.
Being right next to a transit stop may not be as favorable as it may first seem. There's an "unlucky" spot in my hometown right across from the subway, and I think people would rather walk a block or two and not have to watch the stream of commuters outside the window. Could be stress-inducing!