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Jan Ransom/New York Daily News
Jaime Lucero, owner of the New Mexican Festival restaurant on Broadway at 102nd St., says there’s nothing unlucky about the site and he’s going to prove it. His restaurant replaces Maria Bonita, which replaced Mama Mexico.
Upper West Side residents are about to get another heaping helping of re-re-refried beans.
A Mexican restaurant has opened at the corner of Broadway and 102nd St. — but this “cursed corner” story has a twist: Every time a Mexican eatery fails at the location, another South-of-the-Border restaurant opens up.
This time, the owner thinks he’ll succeed where so many other would-be Montezumas haven’t.
“Hopefully, we’ll last for many years,” said owner Jaime Lucero, whose Mexican Festival follows the long-lived Mama Mexico and the flash-in-the- sarten Maria Bonita at the corner.
Lucero calls his food “authentic Mexican,” but his menu features a similar collection of moles, tacos and enchiladas found at dozens of restaurants in the same neighborhood.
So can he defy the corner of perdición?
Jan Ransom/New York Daily News
Mexican Festival is the latest South-of-the-Border restaurant in a series of eateries to move to the corner of doom, but the new owner is optimistic.
“I have been a business person most of my life. I am confident we are going to do the job,” said Lucero, who owned a lower East Side Mexican restaurant for 25 years. “It’s the quality of the service and the people behind this.”
Locals are still shaking their heads.
“I don’t know” if he’ll succeed,” said one resident, who gave her name only as Mary “I don’t know why it’s such an unlucky corner.”
In actuality, the notion of a “cursed corner” is a bit of a myth.
“Not only do corners change all of the time, New Yorkers are moving and what may not work one year may do very well another year,” said Bret Thorn, senior editor of Nation’s Restaurant News. “It’s really a question of funding, the right concept and being a good operator and making it happen.”
In other words, location, location, fajitas.
