Chala at Ya, Corrales— The Flying Star Café will open its first Westside location just north of Coors and Alameda (10700 Corrales NW at Cabezon) on Monday, Aug. 7. It’s a “soft opening,” meaning the Flying Star people don’t want media people like me heralding its arrival just yet. (Sorry, not happening.) What they do want you to be aware of is the public grand opening on Aug. 19, when they’ll have all the kinks ironed out, live music and other fun stuff from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.Flying Star just relocated its main offices from (inexplicably) Wisconsin and Phoenix to an Albuquerque industrial complex on Broadway just north of Menaul. They’re also in the process of consolidating all three commissary operations–the company’s coffee roastery, central bakery and kitchen–within that same building. “The way I picture it is like a big central nervous system,” says Community Relations and Marketing Director Lindsay Lancaster. She adds there are plans to create a cupping room on the grounds, where people can taste fresh-roasted coffee varieties under exacting, pseudo-scientific conditions.Up next is a 3-acre purchase in Bernalillo on Camino Real for a Flying Star-backed shopping center with (I hear) attached townhouses. That should be finished in roughly one year. A smaller Flying Star operation is planned for Paseo del Norte at Wyoming, with no tentative date yet announced.
All The News That's Fit To Eat
Thai Tips— Kathy, the industrious owner of Sushi King, Bangkok Café (she bought the place last summer) and Queen of Sushi Pattaya Thai (which she is currently renting out to new tenants Rabieng Thong), plans to open yet another restaurant in the coming weeks. The Asian Noodle Bar will operate out of the old Pasta Central/Blimpie storefront on Central between Third and Fourth Streets with a menu of noodle dishes that reaches across the Asian continent, as well as boba teas. Think pho and pad thai with a side of Japanese cold sesame noodles. (Kathy is Thai herself, but has a background in several types of Asian cuisine.) How the heck does she find time to operate so many restaurants at once? Easy. She works seven days a week and doesn’t have a husband. Krung Thai (7923 Menaul NE, 292-9319) has been dark for a few weeks now, but on Saturday, Aug. 5, it will re-emerge with a remodeled dining room, a new set of owners and a different name. Details were top-secret at press time (actually, my grasp of Thai stops at “hello” and “thank you”), but I was able to find out that items off the entire new menu will be 10 percent off on its first day. Khawp khun kha!
