Book Freak Corner: Mission Street Food

Mission Street Food’s Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz reveal their narrative on page one, a retrospective via a fictional business plan.
It reads as a horrifically comic strategy, designed intentionally to fail.
And one would assume that it would fail, aside from the fact that their business has been a raging success that continues to grow, evolve and multiply.
Their triumphs in the face of what appear to be business-lethal obstacles are due no small part to their creativity, skill, hard work, uncanny timing and resourcefulness.
You’ll marvel at their execution of an innovative-yet-simple form of altruism avec profit, the benevolent business.
And you’ll dream of having for your own their vast, eternally-forgiving (and seemingly always on-hand) network of kind, talented friends.
Do they punch the mat every time?
Does the French judge always give them a “10”?
Oh dear, no.
There are countless incidents of deer-in-headlights overwhelmed.
Imperfect situations getting worse. Systems failing.
Yet there’s an even longer list of all the things that went right. Oddball arrangements, quirky partnerships, optimism, endurance and experience earned in the trenches that help win the day, alongside an execution of ideas that were just so crazy they figured they just might work.
And in many cases, they did indeed.
Instructive, clear, and oft-times humorous food/recipes section will inspire, inform, and amuse the energetic neophyte as well as the creative-yet-food-margin-conscious BOH veteran.
Mission Street Food: clever, candid storytelling of a humble underdog/DIY endeavor gone very, very right – get down on it and know that five bucks from every book purchase will go to Slow Food USA.