rehfan:

jonlovett:

dontbearuiner:

toloveviceforitself:

onewit-torulethem-all:

prokopetz:

toloveviceforitself:

prokopetz:

andersonsallpurpose:

prokopetz:

moonbelowsea:

prokopetz:

If you ever feel like you must be the most unobservant person in the world, remember: I once spent half a year failing to notice that my new favourite restaurant was a money-laundering front for the Ukrainian mafia.

(I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in retrospect, the fact that it was always dead no matter the time of day - I think the busiest I ever saw it was five people, myself included - well, that should have been a tipoff. Also, the waitstaff kept calling me “Mr. Prokopetz”, which I had assumed was just part of the restaurant’s gimmick, but given that “Prokopetz” is a Ukrainian surname, I’m now force to wonder whether they’d thought I was, you know, in the business. I just liked the pierogi!)

What I need to know is how on earth did OP finally realize his favorite restaurant was a money-laundering front for the mafia.

I’d like to say I put together the clues, but in reality, I just showed up one day to find that the place had been indefinitely shut down, and later learned it was because the managers had all been arrested.

What I really want to know is how good the food was?

Excellent, if your tastes run to the “heavy cream and too much garlic” end of the spectrum.

Every crime front I’ve ever eaten at has had completely amazing food, honestly. I am pretty convinced that if you want to open a front, you don’t choose “restaurant” as your front-business unless you have a relative who loves to cook.

It tickles me that this is evidently a sufficiently common experience that people find it relatable. (Seriously, check the notes!) We should write reviews or something.

did I just read the line “every crime front I’ve ever eaten at” with my own two eyes

Look, I went to college and lived my early adulthood in a town whose entire thing was import/export, and we had a lot of restaurants that were suspiciously empty except when they were closed and filled with very serious men in nice clothes.

They were usually run by someone who was about the right age to be some adult’s parents or grandparents, and in the case of the two Korean restaurants matching this description, they didn’t speak English. Universally though, they were very pleased to see customers, very proud of their cooking, and very very interested in keeping us far away from the aforementioned serious men in nice clothes. And despite having huge dining rooms and never having more than a couple customers, they never went out of business.

Also, because I am very, very stupid and sometimes don’t think before I talk, I once said loudly, over the phone, while sitting in one of these places, “Hey! Yeah if you want to meet us, we’re eating at [place]. You know…[place]? You totally know it. The Front, on Warwick st!”

The looks I got from every single employee were amazing and then I left.

When I was a little kid, there was an amazing Italian restaurant a few blocks from our house.

It was usually mostly empty, save some barflies and a couple Serious Men In Nice Suits. That it had “investors” was no kind of secret.

But my god, the food.

The place must have closed over 20 years ago, but I can still taste the angel hair pomodoro, the chicken parm, the eggplant parm. I miss that place.

there used to be this sausage and peppers stand in mill basin that was just straight up somebody’s grandma selling sausage and peppers out of a hole in the wall, and it was so painfully obviously a front for the mob. best damn sausage and peppers i’ve ever had.

We had one here not too far from my place too and I had no idea until they were suddenly in the local papers and permanently closed. It’s still sitting there untouched seven years later and completely shut up.

The best gnocchi I have had in my entire life.

(via owlmylove)