The Life and Death of Flor Morena

Over at blogging.la, Will Campbell weighed in on the still-mysterious disappearance of Silver Lake's short-lived Flor Morena eatery. Will, who snapped the photo above, writes that the abandoned restaurant makes him downright pissed over the missed opportunity it represents:

I surprise myself at how pissed off I am about it. Pissed off not just that it's gone, but that the eatery in such a great space and a prime location with a nice complement of rare on-premises parking could fail so miserably and completely in so short a time after it's much anticipated and seemingly welcomed arrival around the end of 2005. At the risk of jumping to conclusions whoever owned the place had to have suffered a catastrophic loss of some sort or had to be a special kind of clueless to screw this up.

So what happened? Several readers weigh in, many bemoaning Flor Morena's identity crisis and overpriced food. (I second that -- we always were going to go there, but the steep prices turned us off. Only time we went there was for a free event.)

Tyson, for example, comments:

The menu was all over the place, creatively: fried bologna sandwiches AND Filet Mignon? A lack of decent seating made the Filet totally superfluous, there is nothing "fine dining" about the place. It never really attracted the kind of customer base it needed (ie: return customers), and basically withered away as a money pit. The owner lady closed, I assume, after running it financially into the ground.

Clare backs him up:

Their staff spent more time hanging out with their friends outside and smoking than helping customers. Their sandwiches were dry and the combinations had little or no thought as to texture and flavor. They were doing a little of Mexican, Italian, California cuisine and a few others in between. I recall being really pissed after the 3rd or 4th time there - why was this crappy space wasting such prime restaurant real estate in Silver Lake??

But Oscar Garza writes in to say he knows what really happened:

OK kids, lemme help set you straight. The owner is a friend of mine, so I'm admittedly biased. She's a great cook, but she'd never run a restaurant before, and her ambitions got the best of her (and her business partner--she's not independently wealthy). Anyway, my understanding is that she's negotiating with several suitors who are interested in the space.

Too bad. But here's hoping the next tenant doesn't run into the same issues.