Another restaurant to bite dust in seemingly cursed Roslindale location
Cafe Rialto on Washington Street is shutting its doors, apparently as soon as it can sell off all its beer and wine.
Cafe Rialto goodbye special! Tues-Friday all beer bottles $3.50, all draft beer $4.00 (except bud light $2.50) and all glasses of wine $6.00!! Come on down and get your Cafe Rialto fix before we close our doors!
The location was long the home of an abandoned restaurant that gave way to the Square Corner Cafe, which shut down only to be replaced by the cafe, named for the movie theater that used to be where the health center is now. Ed. note: What are the odds the liquor license will be snapped up by some chain seeking to build some hoity-toity place on the South Boston waterfront?
H/t Hank Layfield.
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Six bucks a glass
for their crappy wine? Not worth it even if $6 were the regular price.
Bogey man
Let go of the S. Boston hate there, it's eating you up ed!
Hate?
Nah, fact. There's a reason there aren't any bars on Blue Hill Avenue, anymore. And guess where Ups N Downs' license went? Or haven't you heard of Liberty Wharf?
Always stirring
Maybe if the Queen Mary II docked at Fallon Field today you wouldn't be stirring the pot with another dig at South Boston. We do Halloween decorations too.
Blue Hill Ave.
While Roxbury no longer has the two notorious bars on Blue Hill Ave. , the area has also dropped from your news site as a frequent location for shootings, underage drinkers and brawls.
Because people don't understand the difference between on premises and off premises consumption licenses, they refer to the lack of bars on Blue Hill Ave. instead of recognizing that Roxbury has the second highest number of package store licenses in Boston. And these aren't the wine tasting types of places.
Even the Fernandez store at 616 Shawmut Ave. is 1 block away from Dudley Square. So don't fret about a lack of neighborhood bars. As your story indicated, the drinkers are using the public parks.
No, you don't get to change the topic like that
You might be right that the end of places like the Breezeway has made Blue Hill Ave. safer. But that's not the issue (and, seriously, somebody from South Boston is not in a position to argue that, not when you've got drug addicts murdering grandmothers and ripping open cars like so many piggy banks).
The issue is that Boston has a limited number of liquor licenses and that, increasingly, they are getting sucked out of neighborhoods by pricey places along the waterfront.
Concerned Citizens of
Concerned Citizens of Roslindale are out in force already with torches and pitchforks to make sure Domino's doesn't slip in there when they close.
No those
Are transplants from JP
*Timidly puts up "Coming
*Timidly puts up "Coming Soon" sign*
Went there twice, the pizza
Went there twice, the pizza was decent and the pitchers were fun. Nothing to travel for, but a nice place to have around the corner. The staff were a bit brusque and the place never had the feel of a well run operation, it was more or less like the Square Corner. I'm still pulling for a real coffee shop to come to the square, we've had nothing since Emacks turned into whatever they call that place where the old Albanian guys glower at you.
Weird vibe
Went there about twice after the Farmers Market. The second time I went, the barflies who seemed to be permanently glued to their seats were chatting with the bartender about how "the gays" were ruining everything.
There are plenty of places in the Square to get a bite that are not full of bigots, so I never went back.
Funny - the chef owner is
Funny - the chef owner is gay, so perhaps you don't get irony.
I thought there pizza was good, and enjoyed the pitchers. Sorry to see them go.
If this didn't happen, how
If this didn't happen, how would you know you were in Roslindale and not JP?
What's the turnover rate there?
I wasn't sure which side of the street this place was, so I pulled it up on Street View... the Street View picture (which was taken while the farmer's market was running, so probably last summer) has the Square Corner Cafe occupying that spot, so Cafe Rialto has to be new within the last year or so. Cursed spot indeed.
Old Street View
Rialto opened in 2010. My guess is they had a 2 year lease and either couldn't take a rent increase or else just weren't making enough to see keeping open.