  Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 4 Registered: 02-2007 |
Forgive me if this is the wrong spot but Maria's in Ferndale, formerly on Grand River, is closing *their* doors forever tomorrow. I hadn't read anything here about it so I thought I'd put the word out. (Message edited by Hbisson on March 29, 2008) | ||
Oldredfordette Member Username: Oldredfordette Post Number: 4229 Registered: 02-2004 |
?????????????•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Why? How sad. | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 5 Registered: 02-2007 |
Apparently they can't keep up with food costs. Sadly after Joan died I don't think her son could really keep up with the intricacies of the business. | ||
Smogboy Member Username: Smogboy Post Number: 7434 Registered: 11-2004 |
They had some killer pasta back in the day. I always loved that quaint little place in Ferndale. 'Tis sad that another restaurant closes. They'd been there even back in the leaner Ferndale days too. Again, sad. | ||
Dannyv Member Username: Dannyv Post Number: 133 Registered: 08-2007 |
I recall them sharing a parking lot with the Rosedale Hardware. | ||
Postbop Member Username: Postbop Post Number: 96 Registered: 09-2007 |
 I loved that place | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 253 Registered: 04-2007 |
I didn't put this in the pizza thread, but Maria's VIP pizza was always my favorite. I never got there too often after they moved from Rosedale Park, but the food was always tops. I hope this is all a rumor. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1123 Registered: 01-2007 |
How sad to hear all this. I walked over and took a few snaps this morning, and the place was quite and empty:    | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1124 Registered: 01-2007 |
Here's one more:  | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 7 Registered: 02-2007 |
I love those pictures, thanks for posting them. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1125 Registered: 01-2007 |
How many of you have sat at this intimate table?  | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 8 Registered: 02-2007 |
Ha! I worked there for a few years and that table was the bane of my existence. Half the time people clamored for it and the other half of the time people hated it. | ||
Malcovemagnesia Member Username: Malcovemagnesia Post Number: 68 Registered: 12-2005 |
Any word of what will happen to the space? The times I've been there on weekend evenings with my girl, the place was always packed and we frequently had to wait for at least a few minutes to get a table. It'd be a shame that an otherwise very successful & popular business goes under just because management can't take the heat. Hopefully somebody (former employees, a very satisfied -and solvent- customer, an adventurous entrepreneur) could come in and resurrect the place. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1128 Registered: 01-2007 |
This was during the time you lived above Joe's Party Store, no doubt. At least you made a buck, or two. Hbisson, do you have any other stories from your time there? Photos? | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1129 Registered: 01-2007 |
Malcovemagnesia, see my views on your question here: https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/5/133121.html?1206802469 | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 5831 Registered: 10-2003 |
Am I the only one who found this place overrated? Don't get me wrong, I hate to see a Ferndale business close, but anytime I ate there I found the food extremely bland. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1130 Registered: 01-2007 |
I never ate there, Johnlodge, and I live close enough to throw a stone from my house and hit it. So I don't really know. I hear it was swell, but you know how tastes go. | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 9 Registered: 02-2007 |
All my stories are of the usual crazy restaurant variety, too many reservations and not enough tables. Working with Joan Orlando was fantastic. Her picture is next to the word "feisty" in the dictionary. One night a gentleman came in without a reservation and was upset we couldn't seat him for about a half hour. He said "What do you think you are, the 21 Club?" and Joan shot back "No, if we were you wouldn't be seated at all!". There were so many marriage proposals and anniversary celebrations there too. It was so great to chat with people who had been patronizing Maria's since the days on Grand River. Such a great customer base. I'd probably recognize at least some of you as customers. Sadly the pictures I had from the employee parties and stuff were all lost in the great hard drive crash a few years back. (Oh and feel free to refer to me as Heather if you want) | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 10 Registered: 02-2007 |
Johnlodge-I actually agree with you for the most part. Most of the dishes were very standard (in some cases sub-standard). Last time I ate there I was disappointed. Frankly I think part of the reason they're closing is because the food has been going downhill and the prices have been rising. | ||
Gene Member Username: Gene Post Number: 95 Registered: 10-2006 |
I agree with Johnlodge and Hbisson standard to substandard and overrated. I think that Joan's friendship with restaurant critic Molly Abraham may have had a role with the past success of this place. | ||
Hbisson Member Username: Hbisson Post Number: 11 Registered: 02-2007 |
Gene-That and the nostalgia factor. I was too young to have ever eaten at the original location so I have no frame of reference when it comes to the food quality changing through the years. | ||
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed Post Number: 1758 Registered: 02-2006 |
I never went there because I tried to go once in the winter, and you could not enter from the street, you had to enter from the back parking lot. Screw that, I'm not walking around the block. I went to Buffalo Wild Wings. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1131 Registered: 01-2007 |
Heather thanks for that laugh. I have days in the restaurant biz as well. In my misspent youth I worked as a porter at Perini’s on Whittier in Detroit. I have stories I can't tell as long as the people involved are still alive. I spent four years there working nights by myself, from 11 pm to 7 am six nights a week. I would ride my Schwinn bike or walk the couple of miles from my apartment on E. Warren and Three Mile to get there. I really missed out on a lot (including school) during that time, as I was 18 and had to support myself. Working nights was hard on me as my only “day” off was Monday. Few of my friends at that time would hang out with me on a Monday night, so I spent my time alone and drunk. I recall my time at the restaurant as the loneliest of my life, with no one to talk to and only the radio for companionship. I knew my friends were out there, doing the things that people that age should be doing: meeting girls, parting, taking trips and seeing the world. I worked all the holidays, and after everyone left I felt like I was the only person awake in the world. The music, and alcohol, was my only comfort as one night blended into the next, one year followed by the other. In the end I broke down. It took over four years, but I had enough. But I look back upon my days then with a sense of dread and nostalgia. If only I could go back in time to those days, and do it different, or do it over... | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 254 Registered: 04-2007 |
I moved to Rosedale Park in '78, and at that time (or shortly after) Maria's was six or eight tables in one storefront on Grand River. We went there pretty often (the location was only four or five blocks away), and that was about the only place we would get carryout. Within a couple of years they had filled three storefronts. Does anyone know about what year they opened in the first storefront? | ||
Rustic Member Username: Rustic Post Number: 3214 Registered: 10-2003 |
Parkguy, AIR they opened in '74 (maybe '73, but I think '74). They were just a two table store-front pizza joint for the first few years (the famous Red Devil and that lesser known place in brightmoor across from the Irving theater (vics? vio's? i fergit) had MUCH better pizza, but Maria's was better than little Caesars down the block or Carlos' across from the Norwest). They eventually expanded into more of a sitdown restaurant with linens and waiters, liquor and an elaborate menu. At some point along the way they opened another restaurant waaaay up past Northland some where over near the zoo. Eventually boxing's Emmanuel Stewart became a partner in the Detroit restaurant and eventually took over the place. | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 255 Registered: 04-2007 |
I think the second location was around Greenfield or Coolidge and Nine Mile. For a while you could get their garlic bread sticks in some grocery stores, I think. | ||
Catjack7 Member Username: Catjack7 Post Number: 1 Registered: 03-2008 |
I'm very sad to hear about Maria's closing. I've been going to the Ferndale location at least once a month for the past 13 years. Loved their chicken piccata, chicken parm and spinach tortellini. I'm going to miss that restaurant. | ||
Pythonmaster Member Username: Pythonmaster Post Number: 155 Registered: 12-2006 |
I'm afraid it's becoming an Olive Garden world, and every time a Maria's or a Cardinelli's closes, life becomes a little less fun. | ||
Gazhekwe Member Username: Gazhekwe Post Number: 1769 Registered: 08-2007 |
We found them on Grand River and went there whenever fortune smiled on us enough to afford it. Their garlic bread was great! We felt very sad when they moved out, but subsequently found them in Ferndale. We didn't go there very often as it was off our trail and often a good long wait for a table. Lately it has not been up to the old standards, but I will still be sorry to see them go. RE: Olive Garden world, that is really hard to take. When we travel, we always seek out local spots, and it is getting really hard to do that. You have to get right away from the interstate and find the scattered spots full of diehard local folk. | ||
Kayakor Member Username: Kayakor Post Number: 12 Registered: 02-2007 |
Maria's was consistently good...not great..but good. First date with my significant other was at Maria's. Via Nove, just down the street from Maria's, seems to have become the place for "nice" italian food in Ferndale - although Via Nove is more expensive. | ||
Durango Member Username: Durango Post Number: 87 Registered: 10-2006 |
Parkguy, I thought it was called Mama Mia on Grand River i Rosedale Park? I thought they moved out to Livonia on Plymouth Road by the old Fisher Body Plant back in the late eighties. | ||
Durango Member Username: Durango Post Number: 88 Registered: 10-2006 |
Parkguy, I thought it was called Mama Mia on Grand River in Rosedale Park? I thought they moved out to Livonia on Plymouth Road by the old Fisher Body Plant back in the late eighties. | ||
Gazhekwe Member Username: Gazhekwe Post Number: 1773 Registered: 08-2007 |
Different restaurant. There were several Mam(m)a Mia's. I am not sure if the one on Beech Daly and Seven Mile and the one on Plymouth are the same people. There was also one on Eight Mile just west of Evergreen that moved out to Walled Lake. None of them were Maria's on Grand River. | ||
Treelock Member Username: Treelock Post Number: 307 Registered: 03-2005 |
We were walking around downtown Ferndale on Saturday and learned it was also the last day for Dragonfly, a women's clothing boutique. They are moving to downtown Rochester. The employee told us business has been bad and the owner believes she can do better in Rochester. Record Time is now empty, with a "For Rent" sign in the window and another that reads "Technology stole my record store." It's a tough, depressing time. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1146 Registered: 01-2007 |
And what is more depressing Treelock, is that Ferndale is helping this exodus by making the downtown business pay an extra tax to promote the area. It’s a crock of shit and the results are evident here. I think the bigger plan is to force out all but the night clubs so Ferndale can compete with Royal Oak. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 5847 Registered: 10-2003 |
There is no extra tax for downtown businesses as of yet. The millage that passed applied the current PSD tax to the new expanded boundries of the "Downtown". The businesses in the core of downtown had already been paying this tax. The DDA plans to bring up the new PSD tax again in the future, but they will meet just as stiff resistance, if not more so, than last time. | ||
Defendbrooklyn Member Username: Defendbrooklyn Post Number: 791 Registered: 11-2005 |
Bummer...Great wine and bread. I hope something unique fills the void... Is ferdale slipping? | ||
Pythonmaster Member Username: Pythonmaster Post Number: 157 Registered: 12-2006 |
Not just Ferdale, downtown USA is slipping. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 5887 Registered: 10-2003 |
Downtown USA was having a pretty good comeback. I think it still is, as far as being a desirable place. I think USA in general is slipping, and so everything with it. It'll come back around. | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 256 Registered: 04-2007 |
I think there are still a couple of Mama Mia restaurants around... the one at Grand River and Beech Daly is still open, and I think the one on Plymouth east of Inkster is, too. I was talking to a guy who is familiar with Maria's and he said that the place was still very busy on weekends, but very slow the rest of the week. Restaurants are a tough business to run. The failure rate is very high, especially in a bad economy. |
