A Neighborhood Walk To Italy Pasta & Pizza Thinking About My Bad Luck With Black-Eyed Peas

After a drive too far on Sunday I did not feel like any sort of drive anywhere today, on this first Monday of October.

So, I took a walk in my neighborhood, with Alberstons as the destination, with acquiring the Ink Edition of DFW.com as the goal.

On the way to Albertsons I walked by the newly moved ITALY Pasta & Pizza restaurant. The move was a short distance from this restaurant's old location in the strip mall in which Albertsons is the anchor.

When I first moved to my current location the now ITALY Pasta & Pizza restaurant was a Black-Eyed Pea.

When I visited Texas in May of 1998 to check out if I would be agreeable to moving here I was taken to a Black-Eyed Pea. I recollect asking the waitress why the restaurant was called Black-Eyed Pea.

By the time I had a turkey dinner at the Black-Eyed Pea across the street from my new abode I knew the reason for the name.

In one of his more memorably memorable odd questions, at some point in time, earlier in this century, around the start of a new year, Gar the Texan asked me if I had any trouble finding my black-eyed peas this year.

Huh? Said I. Why would I be looking for black-eyed peas? Gar the Texan then verbalized astonishment that eating black-eyed peas was not a new year tradition up north in Yankee-land. It was then I learned that in the Deep South one ingests black-eyed peas at the start of a new year so as to insure that one will have good luck during the coming year.

I have yet to eat a single black-eyed pea since I have been in Texas. And I have had nothing but bad luck. I probably should embrace the superstition.

Back to my former Black-Eyed Pea restaurant. I was not too long at my current location when that restaurant closed. I don't remember how long it was before it re-opened as the Super Asia Buffet.

The Super Asia Buffet quickly became my favorite Chinese buffet, partly due to the fact it was just a short walk from my abode. Around the time the Super Bowl came to Arlington, the Super Asia Buffet, in what I am sure they thought was an extremely clever marketing move, changed their name to the Super Bowl Buffet.

Sushi was added to the menu, which had me liking it even more.

And then the Deep Recession came in 2008. The Super Bowl Buffet lasted a couple years into the recession, with noticeably fewer cars in the parking lot. And then it closed.

I mourned the Super Bowl Buffet's closing.

None of the Chinese buffets I frequented pre-2008 have survived the Great Recession.

They probably should have had black-eyed peas on the menu.....