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| Maybe I'm just being hyper-critical because of my professional disdain for Gannett, but I found it a little curious to see this unskeptical, PRish piece in today's CJ Business Section. I like Mambo, but thought it odd to see them get this blast of free advertising just as another couple is opening another Cuban restaurant in town, Havana Rhumba in St. Matthews. Mambo sets its own course Cuban restaurant seeks success in the South End By Caroline Lynch The Courier-Journal The owners of Mambo Cuban Cuisine brought recipes from thousands of miles away to their small restaurant in the South End, but for some Louisvillians, that's still not close enough. Javier Cendejas, 61, a concert pianist from Mexico, and Vivian Dziekan, 32, a Panamanian schooled in restaurant management and business, opened their Cuban restaurant a year ago in the Iroquois Manor Shopping Center. The business partners decided on Cuban because it was familiar and no other Louisville restaurant was dedicated solely to the cuisine. Full story in today's CJ | |||
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| I am really excited about Mambo's. I met Javier and he seems to know exactly what he is doing. The food there is fantastic and I just hope that he keeps it up for everyone's sake.... | |||
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| Estimado Robin: My name is Vivian Dziekan co-owner of Mambo Cuban Cuisine. I have been reading and admiring your work for three years now. It took us two years to get Mambo ready and through you, we learned some of the behaviours and what Southern Indiana and Louisville expect when they go out to dine. Honestly, I am sort of disspointed about your comment, Robin. I thought that no matter where the source would come from, you will be glad that a small, ethnic, and privately owned restaurant made it through their first year. It was not easy and we are still learning and will keep on learning while we encounter new challenges. Therefore, we felt honored when Ms. Lynch came to interview our us, our clientelle and took pictures of our staff. We have grown to be a close family, all of us are immigrants giving our very best. Steering for a better tomorrow. Last month was a time of pain for each one of us and this has brought some light into our daily work. I know Fernando and Cristina and there is no doubt in my mind that they will be successful. And they will also have their moment to shine. We will be glad to share with them our experiences and help them on what we can if we have the opportunity. There is room for more Cuban in Louisville, just see how many Cuban eateries are in Miami and how many successful Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and Vietnamese restaurants are here in Louisville. Hoping to meet you in person someday, so we could talk food. Always welcome here in the South End, Vivian & Javier | |||
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| I'm very sorry you felt disappointed. My comments were in no way meant to be critical of you or your restaurant. For your sake, I am delighted that you got good publicity, and I don't begrudge you that at all. I only meant that it seemed a little odd for the newspaper to run an article of this type about one restaurant in particular just as another restaurant of the same kind was about to open. I hope you understand that no personal slight was intended. | |||
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| I've found that that our local press (including Business First) are loathe to write anything remotely critical about businesses in town unless it has been well vetted by another source. Having said that, this sort of profile seems common for the business section (and my little company has been the happy beneficiary of similar profiling in the past couple of years). The sad truth is that the C-J has gutted its business writing as badly as the rest of the paper in recent years. (I'm not a sports nut, but that's the only section of the paper that seems to have decent writers any more.) | |||
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| Similarly, a week or so ago New Albany's Tribune ran a front-page story about Tommy Lancaster's restaurant. It, too, was a softball, but the story was much in keeping with what I think all local media is about. Given that a rag like Velocity lobs softballs on behalf of its advertisers as part of its "we'll tell you what's trendy - THIS week" strategy, none of it should be surprising ... unless, like Robin and others, one can remember the far-off time when journalism and advertising weren't mentioned in the same breath in any but a perjorative sense. Now I feel better. | |||
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| Slipping gently away from food-related topics, TP, I'll note that sports columnists Rick Bozich and the often-controversial Pat Forde both go back to the Binghams, for whatever that's worth. The one thing that really irritates me about the CJ's sports section, though, is the very short shrift that they give to the home team Louisville Bats. To read the sports section, you might think that we live in Cincinnati! What's more, even the limited Bats coverage does remind me of the business section in that it's almost always see-no-evil, unskeptical reporting, very short on depth or analysis ... and more often than not buried deep inside the section. Arrrgh ... I feel a little better now ... | |||