Frankel Ventures

Glaser’s Bakery returned from its annual summer vacation.  For a few weeks, they’re baking some summer specials like zucchini cake, zucchini bread, and carrot cake.

Ecco La restaurant closed its doors for the final time.  Located at 1660 3rd Avenue, Ecco La served a variety of Italian dishes.  Fans of the restaurant and chef, can dine at Bardolino on 78th and 2nd.

Ecco La belong to the same restaurant group as Bardolino, Figaro Pizza, and Bem Bolado.

In case you missed SpecialsByZip.com’s e-mail yesterday, or if you don’t have Lower Manhattan included in your e-mails, you can now receive Dolce Vita’s nightly specials, featured dishes, and events by e-mail.

According to Dolce Vita,

Somewhere between old Italy and new Italy, somewhere between classic Little Italy and contemporary SoHo lies this little intimate, somewhat rustic nook with beautiful food.  Serving only homemade pastas and sauces, along with fresh meat and seafood to create uncomplicated simplicity on the plate, Dolce Vita serves lunch and dinner, and brunch on weekends.

You won’t find ultra modern, pretense at Dolce Vita.  You walk in to find an exposed brick wall solidifying the space, contrasting the modern New York restaurant kitchen, perhaps not a kitchen that you expect to find walking into a classic farmhouse in Tuscany, but necessary to have this old brick wall experience contemporary life and creating dishes to enjoy against its beautiful brick backdrop.

Dolce vita seats up to 60 comfortably, offering a full bar, beer, cocktails and two wine lists.  One for the adventurous wine drinker, an eclectic list that offers about ten new American and old world Italian style wines pricing anywhere from 30 dollars to 95 dollars, and another list offering about eight whites and eight reds all for 20 dollars a bottle that is also available by the glass.

For more information, please visit Dolce Vita’s page on SpecialsByZip.com.

In case you missed our official e-mail announcement (or if you’re not subscribed to the news list), Kosher Advantage added to MyOwnChuppah.com to its network of discounts.

Kosher Advantage card members now receive 5% off all purchases at MyOwnChuppah.com.

More details are available by visiting the archived e-mail announcement.

Not much time to write now, but I wanted to announce that Luca restaurant (on 1st Avenue and 91st street) will be closing for renovations through August.  They’re also changing the name to Cavatappo Grill.

Luca restaurant and Cavatappo Wine Bar are sister establishment’s.

Just wanted to give you all a heads up that during the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about some of our clients, from SpecialsByZip.com and from Kosher Advantage.

The idea is to give you a better sense of each establishment, something in addition to what you may find on our website.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to respond.

As always, don’t be afraid to let me know what you think.  You can reach me through this blog or via mfrankel@specialsbyzip.com.

Today we announced the winner of the Dorian’s Seafood Market drawing winner - Dr. Sharon Kahn.  Dr. Kahn won two 1.5 pound lobsters, live or steamed, from Dorian’s.

For those of you have never tried Dorian’s Seafood Market, they offer a selection of fish and seafood.  While the store is on the smaller side, they have a relatively wide selection and offer free delivery.  They also offer a selection of cooked fish and seafood, and offer to cook your orders at no extra charge.

Learn more about Dorian’s Seafood Market, view pictures, and read subscribers’ reviews of the market.

If you want to increase your chances of winning any of our drawings, you can refer friends and write reviews.  Each referral and each review is worth one extra entry, which never expires.

Colleen Kotsovos, owner of Andreas’ Brick Oven, called me Monday informing me that the restaurant now accepts credit cards (mastercard and visa only).   This is a big deal for Andreas’ as they’ve never accepted credit cards (the restaurant has been around for eight years).

I’m going to write a piece on accepting credit cards next week, as I think most consumers don’t understand all of the ramifications for vendors, but I wanted “break” this news for all of you.  I’ve noticed a bunch of reviewers of Andreas’ mentioned that the downside of the restaurant is cash only. 

 I’ll fill you on the arguements for and against it next week, and why some restaurants only accept American Express.

I’m sitting here trying to get some work done, and I keep getting distracted by a jingle that’s popping into my head every five seconds…”F-R-E-E that spells free, credit report dot com baby”…

I guess it’s pretty effective writing and marketing by them, but it’s certainly annoying right now!  Does it ever happen to you?  What’s your favorite/least favorite jingle?

Yup, it took us a little longer than expected to work out the final integration on our participants’ pages, but Restaurant Reviews are finally here!

As you may recall (or see below), I wrote a few weeks ago that we’d be launching our newest feature soon.  I’m happy to say that today we’ll be sending a special e-mail to all of our SpecialsByZip.com subscribers announcing the new section.

I won’t repeat what I wrote previously, but if you’re interested in learning more about this section and our reasons for adding it, you may want to read the prior entry.

Personally, I’m pretty excited about this new feature.  As we’ve been working on this, I’ve been starting to use customer reviews more and more when purchasing things or planning trips.  My fiance uses them all the time and has shown me the light so to speak.  (Not to digress, but wouldn’t it be a smart follow up to their commercials if Motel 6 actually left the light on for you when you checked in and first went to your room?)

There is some risk in letting subscribers or customers write reviews.  Sometimes, there are legitimate reasons for mishaps, product errors, etc. and generally speaking, these possibilities aren’t presented in the reviews.  I’ll admit that some things there simply isn’t an excuse for (for example, running out of one food item, subbing another, and not telling/asking/checking with the customer), but sometimes there are.   So, when you read reviews, it’s important to keep in mind that there may be explanation you’re not hearing.

Also, I’m not sure I believe this, but a restaurateur actually told me that he knew of one instance where a customer kept writing horrible reviews about a restaurant, despite constantly ordering delivery from that restaurant.  The reason?  He wanted to minimize his wait time so he figured people wouldn’t order-in after reading a bad review.  If karma exists, I would not want to be that guy.

(As you can tell, I tried to write this entry in a little different style from my previous posts.  Any thoughts?)