Unpossible. Nothing worthwhile is in a strip mall. The Uptown crowd led by the UPoR and city staff have told us that for years. Let alone a strip mall that is “more industrial than gentrified.” Cannot be. Run away.
Once again reality bumps up against central planning. Of course Amelie’s is in a slightly sketchy strip mall. All good and funky things usually can be found in such digs — as about every episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives also attests.
Off-the-beaten path strip malls, perhaps ones a little past their prime, offer cheap, easily accessible retail space to small biz people with big ideas but small wallets. It is pattern that is repeated over and over all across America. Some of the best Thai and Vietnamese food I’ve ever had came from joints set up in strip mall spaces in suburban DC. One place was so recently a shoe store that “shoes” hadn’t been removed from the windows, just papered over. But man did the pho rock.
Then there was a Jamaican joint smack between a computer repair shop and a tax prep office. How they got any work done I have no idea. The owner would get mad at you if he thought you ordered things that didn’t go together. But we eventually bonded over the fact that I ordered his napalm death ox tail stew twice.
Similarly in Charlotte — the wonderful Ethiopian joint down on Kings in an ugly, ugly strip mall that is mortal danger of being gentrified out of existence by local planners’ taxpayer subsidized “Charlottetown-Midtown” monstrosity.
I could go on and on, but I am already getting too hungry. If you hate strip malls, you hate some of the best things in America.
