On the Bond website:
Prime East Village/2nd Ave. TURNKEY OPPORTUNITY!
Well-established East Village Cafe with BEER/WINE LICENSE. 9 years left on lease. TURNKEY. 990 SQ FT + 300 SQ FT Basement. VENTED, COOKING OK. PRIME East Village Location on 2nd Ave & 5th St.
Price: $180,000. I thought the the Mission, which has been around a good 10 years, was already under new ownership? Not a place that I know much about....
Mission is pretty tasty and inexpensive. I'd be sad to see it go.
ReplyDeleteAnother lost part of the 'hood. The family that's run Mission Cafe for the last ten years is lovely. No, they aren't hipsters and, no, they don't quite understand the customs of hipsters (and that hurt their business) but they were very friendly and they ran a real neighborhood place with lots of regulars and reasonable food and coffee.
ReplyDeleteWay back when, I saw John Zorn's Masada (Douglas, Cohen, Baron, and Zorn) play two weeks of free shows in the back of Mission Cafe. I think the shows were billed as practices--the next year they were held at Mogador and cost $$--but they were amazing shows and the tiny but packed out the door crowd was equally amazing. Ginsberg and friends were there, a bunch of Zorn cohorts, Philip Glass, and so on.
I don't think the above post is correct; the family that owned Mission Cafe left or sold it in the last year or two. I'm not sure who is running it now, but I was told they were affiliated with Atlas Cafe (across the street). In any case, it's true the food is bad and the coffee is worse. In a neighborhood with excellent coffee bars it is foolish to serve a bad cup of coffee.
ReplyDeleteYes, the family sold Mission Cafe a while back. I'm probably, oh, a year late ranting about it.
ReplyDeleteActually, the coffee, even the food, wasn't too bad a few years ago. You just had to go with their strengths. Their bagels and cappucinos weren't great but, say, the homemade horchata and the huevos rancheros were a bargain and not bad at all.
I don't think the family owners had anything to do with the Masada gigs. IIRC, they were cooked up by the Irish guy who ran the place, what?, fifteen years ago? (The Masada gigs show up in the Downtown Music blog but without a date. Maybe '94?)