It's Hard Out There For A Liberian Restaurant
One Minnesota restaurant has recently made national headlines. Sadly, it's not because of the food. Well, not the quality of the food, anyway. It's the genre.
You see, Mama Ti's, located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of Brooklyn Park, specializes in Liberian home cooking, inspired by the recipes of proprietor Kellita Whisnant's mother, a Liberian immigrant. And, ever since the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa — Liberia, in particular, earning the dubious distinction as ground zero of the crisis — reporters and camera crews seem to be the only ones interested in that specific style of cuisine. NBC News and the New York Times have both paid recent visits. What makes a great news peg, though, doesn't always translate to increased sales. Business is so bad that Whisnant told a local CBS affiliate that she may be forced to close. Tellingly, not a single Yelper has commented on the place since February.
The few customers that do come in aren't exactly health experts, as Whisnant revealed in one interview: "We have had customers coming in and actually standing in front of us at the counter saying, 'do you have Ebola?'" The answer, of course, is no. But, despite her efforts to better educate the dining public about the real risks associated with the disease, posting informational fliers around the premises — even dropping the "African" descriptor from the restaurant's name, as the Times reported — her saga continues.
Here's a video from USA Today. It's the only clip we could find that actually shows some of the food:
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