It's Just Business

Occasionally, I'm asked to relate accounts from my experience as a serial entrepreneur. (and infrequently, from my experience as a cereal entrepreneur, as well: I was the original developer of short-lived Cappies Corn Nuggets, a sugar-encrusted breakfast cereal shaped somewhat like each of the capital buildings of all 50 U.S. states.)

Keep in mind, as you read, that with the passage of time, it's entirely possible that certain details of long-past events may have been unintentionally misremembered.

Back in the early 90's I was on a scouting trip to France to source custom-made zippers for my exclusive line of "Carpeau" - a portmanteau of "cargo" and "chapeau" - fashionable hats with pocket-style on-head storage capacity of up to 150 pounds. (It ultimately wasn't as successful a product as I'd hoped, but I assure you the false claims of widespread neck injuries and broken bones from falls were grossly overstated and motivated by opportunistic lawsuits seeking easy financial gain. But that's another story.)

I ran into a Black Ethiopian Hasidic French native named Moishe Pierre Selassie Abromowitz who had recently opened a small restaurant called Fressers, off the Champs-Élysées.  He suggested the kreplach soup to start the meal.  I tell you I had never eaten such a delight before.  Similar to an Italian ravioli or Chinese wonton, Moishe's kreplach were so light and fluffy they needed only a suggestion of your intent and they seemed to float into your mouth almost without assistance. And the flavor was out of this world, as well.  A rich mixture of traditional European Jewish ingredients with just the right addition of exotic African spices.  Not surprisingly, this man was one of only six accredited master kreplachers in the world at the time.

So, right then and there, I began envisioning kreplach as the next mega-fad food in America and figured a chain of kreplach emporia would be successful beyond anyone's imagination.  I quickly worked out an agreement with Moishe to acquire the recipe and other elements essential to the concept along with personal instruction about the secret to serving such awesome kreplach.

During the weeks we worked together while he taught me aspects of his craft, we developed a wonderful rapport.  Each day, in a ritual we never tired of, I would playfully ask, "Say, Moishe, where are you from?" and he would reply in his thick Ethiopian/Yiddish/French accent, with a twinkle in his eye, "I'm from Nice."  Then, I would always say, "Oh, that's nice!".  To which he would roar "Not 'nice', you dummy, NICE!! In FRANCE!" and we'd laugh and laugh and laugh till tears ran down our faces. (Truthfully, it quickly became a tiresome routine but neither of us wanted to be the first to admit it, so we just persisted in the daily merriment thru gritted teeth.)

Using the proceeds from the sale, Moishe eventually opened a chain of Kosher Chinese/Ethiopian/Pizza restaurants called "Oy, Am I Hungry!" across Europe that are still popular to this day.  I'm happy for him.

After my work with Moishe ended, I hurried back to America and began putting my plan into action.  I even designed a whimsical mascot for the chain called Kreppy, The Kreplach. While the architects and designers worked on the restaurant layouts, I commissioned an enormous fiberglass model of Kreppy to be used for promotional purposes and advertising graphics.

So, one day, about two months before the opening of the first 200 of the 5000 planned locations we set up an outdoor photoshoot for a massive ad blitz during opening week. By this point, you can just imagine how much money had been invested already.  But I knew the payoff would make it all worthwhile.

The crew had set up the 30 foot tall kreplach on an outdoor lot we'd rented and just about 5 minutes before the first exposure was made, a little boy, no more than 6 years old, standing in the crowd of onlookers with his mother, suddenly screams out "MAMA, LOOK!! IT'S LADY PARTS!!!".  Well, everyone stopped in their tracks and no one moved for several minutes. I'm just thinking over and over, "why didn't anyone notice this before? why? why? why?"

The unavoidable decision was made to strike the set and over the next two weeks, the entire venture just disintegrated.  All the outside investors pulled out and everything tangible had to be sold at a loss. I still have a menu hanging on my wall from "Moishe's House of Kreplach" but that's about all that remains of this grand enterprise.

I did hear some years ago that the guy who bought the offending fiberglass kreplach moved it to a remote location a few hours north of Vegas and set it up as an entrance to a roadside attraction called "Va-Va-Va Ginas".  And of course, by road side attraction, I mean brothel.