Archive for 'Cafe Niagara'

Sri Lankan Cafe Niagara Runs Dry

It appears that the just barely out-of-bounds Cafe Niagara (38th btw 8+9th) has sold its last serving of Sri Lankan specialties. Customer pleas for help apparently couldn’t save them as the storefront has been shuttered for multiple days. I’m sad to see this Midtown oddity go, but not at all surprised. It was always empty and as thrilled as I was when I first stumbled upon it, my subsequent visits were never as exciting or satisfying. I actually bumped into a guy coming out of the restaurant who said he was “looking at the space.” I would have pumped him for more info but he did not seem interested in talking to “the media.” Now we’ll just have to wait and see what moves in next. Maybe Las Poblanitas will come back. I know that would make a lot of Lunch’ers happy.

A Plea For The Sri Lankan Cafe Niagara

Back in August Jeremiah posted about Cafe Niagara, the super unique Sri Lankan joint that took over Las Poblanitas (on 38th btw. 8+9th).  Sadly nobody seems to be going, and Lunch’er DC is afraid they are going to close.  From the forums:

Cafe Niagara is good. Good enough that I could go once a week. It’s cheap. It’s spicy. Great. Problem is I’ve been going twice a week, because it seems like it’s going to go out of business. No one’s ever in there. I took a coworker there today, and while he liked the food he said the place looked weird, like a sleeper cell/hotbed of food poisoning. Thing is, it DOES look weird. I can understand why someone wouldn’t go in. But the food is good. I haven’t felt ill once. But I don’t want to go twice a week. The best part about it is that it’s different. When you eat it twice a week different becomes the same.

Will you answer DC’s call? Sure, the weather sucks but if we don’t support little places like this on the outskirts of Midtown, who will? Don’t let this place become another Barros Luco…

Cafe Niagara Brings Sri Lankan Food to Midtown

I was walking down 38th St. last week when I noticed (the just out of bounds) Café Niagara, proudly displaying a Grand Opening sign. “What’s this?” I thought to myself, peering through the window at their menu. I noticed that among croissants, sandwiches, paninis and other things you can get hundreds of places in midtown, their dinner menu included something called hoppers. Having no idea what that is, I went inside to investigate. It turns out Café Niagara serves Sri Lankan food and while I didn’t have any hoppers (you can read about them on Wikipedia), I did have a filling plate of adventure for $5. See what I got after the jump.
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