Restaurant closure

Dear Editor:Gourmet Café is a down-to-earth café with all the necessities of an eating establishment. Their food is very reasonable and palatable. Many from the community wishing for a good meal, very reasonable price, good service and a very good owner/manager eat their quite often. This is home for many on fixed incomes. [Owner] Frank [Arias] is very personable and after you get to know him, he will sit and talk with you on just about any subject. It is just a pleasure to rest and relax without all the noise and hoopla of fast food establishments. In a fast food establishment, the décor is deigned to get you out of their space as quickly as they can. The city of Downey will demolish Gourmet Café and build fast food strip businesses in its stead. Now I guarantee that any fast food business located there will not give the home-style cooking and friendliness that Frank offers. It is just a shame that the city of Downey can't see the value of a restaurant of this caliber. Oh yes, we have many chain restaurants, most of which are loud, impersonal and expensive. And we have many fast food businesses already that offer impersonal personalities we try to relate to as you order your food and the never-ending ordeal of ordering at the drive-up window only to discover that they have your order wrong after you get home. The city refuses to help Frank and Rita relocate their business here in Downey, or anywhere for that matter. In hard times such as these, laying off his employees will cause a ripple effect in the lives of many. They will no doubt earn less money from the substitute business even if they were to be hired on as new employees for the new owners. So we must say goodbye to Frank, his wife Rita, and the service he has unselfishly provided our community. After living in Downey for some 40-plus years and seeing their kids graduate from the local schools, they must now somehow cope with this imposition. The city of Downey marches to a different drum beat than a lot of its citizens as shown many times over. This is an example of the city of Downey being voted the second best friend to businesses? Humph! -- Larry Drake, Downey

********** Published: December 2, 2010 - Volume 9 - Issue 33