Nashville Flood and Video, How You Can Help

Help Nashville, Help my friends who lost their whole livelihood in one swift rain storm.

Help Nashville at Hands On Nashville, a Volunteer organization

http://www.hon.org/HomePage/index.php/home.html

On Friday April 30th, I quickly stopped into the oldie but goodie Your Choice Restaurant 945 Richard Rd, Nashville (Antioch) TN at the corner of Richard Rd and Antioch Pike in the Antioch Shopping Center, and a quick peek into the brand new (as of Wednesday April 28th) Crown King Buffet, also located at 945 Richard Rd, in the Antioch Shopping Plaza. Both places, I wanted to blog about eventually, but I will have to wait to see if they can recover. Both of these businesses, as well as the Mexican, Middle Eastern and East Asian grocery stores in this strip mall have all been destroyed by flood waters. The taco truck located on the west corner of the building was flooded. These family owned businesses, these families' livelihoods have been destroyed. There is a video I have attached at the bottom of this blog post to show you what happened to these businesses, look at the right of the screen and you will see the building where these businesses were.

Your Choice Restaurant was just bought buy a lovely older couple, the Saengsavangsak family, originally from Laos, and they were war refugees many years ago, and they finally saved enough money to buy their own business a few months ago. They have had a hard life, and this was their big break to business ownership to live the American Dream. I was happy to talk to Mr and Mrs S, and they were more than happy to cook some rice noodles and gravy to my special order. It was truly my choice (thus the name Your Choice) of what I wanted. Again, Mr and Mrs S are super nice, and nice goes a long way to solidifying clients. They were so earnest to please my taste for noodles. I felt a real bond with them. Their restaurant is so very damaged now, with flood waters nearing the ceiling. Mr and Mrs S's American dream of being a business owner, has been dashed. Their business washed out and ruined. Their livelihood, and what they have worked so hard for is now gone. I was going to blog about them soon, but I never thought I would blog this soon and in this way.

This is Your Choice Restaurant lad nah, stir fried rice noodles
with beef and broccoli, scrambled eggs and scallions
that I got on Friday before the flood.

Crown King was going to be a 2nd blog post. I stopped in a week ago to see how the construction was going, and the young men said Wednesday they will be ready for diners to come. I went back 3 days ago to peek in, and was planning on eating at Crown King sometime this week. They said it was $8.99 for the buffet, drink and soup, that is a good deal for dinner out on the town. Crown King was a bakery, and the family was expanding the bakery to include a lunch and dinner buffet of international dishes including 100% Halal meat dishes along with rice, salads and other dishes. The young men I met draped the walls with deep purple fabric, to give this place a warm feel to it. On Friday, had I known this brand new business would be destroyed by flood water, I would have gotten a 2nd dinner there on Friday, 2 days after they opened. I mean, they literally just opened for business and now it is destroyed.

Here is the the YouTube video showing what happened to this little strip mall of delicious food. Look to the right side of this video and you will see the strip mall where these little family owned businesses are now destroyed.



Help Nashville. Help my friends from Your Choice Restaurant, Crown King, the taco truck, the Mexican, Middle Eastern, and Asian grocery stores, and the other small businesses that got washed out from flood waters. They lost their whole livelihood in one quick storm.

Help Nashville at Hands On Nashville, a Volunteer organization
http://www.hon.org/HomePage/index.php/home.html

UPDATE: I just saw my friend who plays in the Nashville Symphony Orchestra today. Due to flooding, and water seeping into the basement and sub-basement of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, it is anticipated that the Schermerhorn will not be open for the next 2 months to clean up and get everything functioning again.