RESTAURANT ROW Six-month-old, heavy-tweeting, “new world creole” Richmond Ave. restaurant Sauté announces it has closed . . . on Twitter: “I guess this weekend saw three inside-the-loop restaurants close: us, Rickshaw, and Cafe La Jadeite. Sigh.” [Twitter; more on the other restaurants at Eating Our Words]
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You better be good if ya wanna make it in this town. And drop the pretentious names.
My partner and I are both in our early 30’s, and we enjoyed Cafe La Jadeite. Unfortunately we couldn’t shake the feeling that it was for ages 70 and above… and it was always deserted.
The Rickshaw was whacked – nice food but turned into a discotheque at 9pm on weekends? They also had the dreaded parking setup where most spaces were reserved for valet or Chuy’s. But most of all I bet they suffered from the construction at the Kirby/Westheimer intersection.
I spent the most miserable four hours of my life at Cafe La Pretentious at a holiday party for The Midway Co’s when I worked there. The location was selected by the pretentious wife of the even more pretentious president. We had to stand in their ‘banquet’ room elbows to azzes for at least an hour before a scrap of food arrived. And indeed, scrap is an accurate description of the portions. The ‘appetizer’ was one tiny shrimp/bait atop one thin slice of avocado with a sprig of parsley. We all stared at our plates in wonder. Several of my dinner companions noted that they were stopping for burgers on the way home. At least when the company sucks you can usually count on the food, but not there.
Jadeite says they’re remodeling and will be open in a few months. I shudder to think . . .