All of my favorite restaurants have closed

Worcester has an abundance of good restaurants and plenty on Shrewsbury Street near WBJ’s offices, but I am a creature of habit. Once or twice a week when I go out for lunch, I look for an affordable place providing good food quickly. Then, I tend to go there, repeatedly. This is a problem for those restaurants, since I am cursed. The first restaurant I really liked was British Beer Co. on Shrewsbury Street, which had a friendly staff, a half-price lunch bar food menu and understood the importance of getting the business crowd out the door expediently. After two years of me going there, the restaurant closed in 2018 and later became the Mexicali Grill. After BBC, I gravitated toward Stix Noodle Bar in the Grid District downtown, which evolved into my obsession with ramen. I sampled a lot of ramen around Worcester, but I always came back to Stix for its lower prices, fresh vegetables and Cherry Coke. I went there for less than a year when its owner announced in August the Stix concept would close in favor of an El Torero Street Food restaurant. While I was going to BBC and Stix, I frequented Red Lantern on Shrewsbury Street. Its to-go Chinese food was never all that great, but if I ever needed a quick hot lunch for $10, Red Lantern was within walking distance. Well, the restaurant closed in December, and the owner was later sentenced to prison for selling knockoff goods at a Shrewsbury flea market. (I also ate at The Usual and The Chameleon on Shrewsbury Street. While I didn’t care for their food or frequent them, one former owner is going on trial for drug charges and the other is in prison). For his story in WBJ's Food & Drink issue, News Editor Grant Welker explores what it will take for Worcester’s restaurant scene to reach the level where it will attract visitors from beyond Central Mass. Restaurant patrons like me are good to pay the bills, but we will never fork over enough money consistently for high-quality restaurants like cover subject Jared Forman’s deadhorse hill to open en masse around the city. Don’t get me wrong, I love Forman’s simjang on Shrewsbury Street, but if I start dropping $35 a week for a meal of beer, ramen and dessert (I can’t resist his crazy soft-serve combinations!), paying my mortgage will be a problem. Plus, I would hate to see simjang close and Forman end up in jail. - Brad Kane, editor