[texas booster]

Albanians have pretty much taken over the “independent” Italian joints in Texas, to the point that I now eat mostly at chain Italian joints. Sneer if you want but at least one has a chance that the kitchen has been cleaned with Clorox.

I worked with a nice enough guy 10 years ago to wrap up a contract with over 400 restaurants, all of then tied together through the Albanian immigrant families (he claimed).

As many other have discovered they simply will never sign, never intend to and will only deal with their own clan. Thankfully I dropped it after a couple of weeks.

But I strongly suspected that these places were less about food and more about money laundering, drug trade, illegal immigration and welfare fraud.

Have no proof but Albanians were looked down by my relatives in Europe for a reason.

[Salvey]

Albanians have pretty much taken over the “independent” Italian joints in Texas

It's almost impossible to find an Italian restaurant in New Jersey, actually owned by Italians. Most are run by Albanians from Kosovo.