Mobay, purveyor of the finest veggie-chicken roti from Fort Greene to Montego Bay, is dead. That enormous maroon and gold sign in the window claiming that Mobay is merely “closed for vacation” through July 30 is a beard, a mocking joke, a fantasy.
“We are closing,” Sheron Barnes, owner of the illustrious Caribbean food joint, told us on Tuesday. “It was a very heartbreaking situation and a heartbreaking decision to make.”
I suppose we can take some comfort in the fact that, contrary to knee-jerk prognoses, this is not another casualty of gentrification.
“In all honesty, it was not the rent,” said Barnes. “We had a fairly decent rent. It’s a matter of stress. [My mother] is 67 now. And she’s been managing the restaurant.”
From the beginning, Mobay has been a mother-daughter affair.
Barnes and her mom, Annette Hew, opened the DeKalb Avenue restaurant, which is between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street, in 2000. Barnes’s Jamaican-Chinese aunt, Avis Hoo, helped develop the menu and train the staff.
Barnes soon expanded the business into a culinary empire, opening a second Mobay and a third restaurant called Baton Rouge, both in Harlem. While Barnes looked after the Manhattan boites, her mom oversaw operations at the original Mobay.
The stress of managing a restaurant soon began to strain Hew’s health. “There comes a point that you have to weigh the value of life,” said Barnes. “It was too much for her. Now she’s retired, relaxing and enjoying life.”
As far as reasons go for closing shop, that’s a pretty good one. But what about our enjoyment? Where will the legions of neighborhood vegetarians go when they’re yenning for fake barbecued chicken, the tangy sauce leaking onto some crusty mac-and-cheese and pork-free collard greens?
Red Bamboo? Please. That place can barely get fake chicken parmigiana right.
As with any awful situation, there is some semblance of a silver lining. For one thing, I’ll probably have a thicker wallet.
Of late, the prices at Mobay had bordered on the outrageous ($15.75 for salmon that’s not even salmon!). In fact, the last time my cravings for fake Jamaican meat got too overpowering, I sauntered inside to find that the restaurant had nixed its more affordable lunch menu. I repaired to Green Apple Cafe next door, not knowing that I had just thrown away what would be my last chance to savor Mobay.
“But the fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” she laughed.
Perhaps the greatest solace is that Barnes does have plans to return to the borough that birthed her restaurant empire (though not necessarily to Fort Greene).
“Our plan is to reopen as a franchise in Brooklyn,” she said. “Fort Greene is definitely one neighborhood that would be a good one.”
“We love Brooklyn,” she added. “That’s where we started.”
The Kitchen Sink
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