What’s the key element of real estate?

Location, location, location.

That’s something the bigwigs at “America’s Next Great Restaurant” forgot. If you’re going to set up a soul food restaurant somewhere, pick your location carefully. New York? No. Hollywood? Never. Bloomington, Minn.? Huh?

Location is what Jamawn Woods has in mind. The winner of the NBC reality TV show "won" and "lost" a chain of three restaurants over the course of eight weeks. Though that was momentary bad news for Jamawn, it has turned into something better: a Soul Daddy restaurant in his hometown of Detroit.

After all three restaurants closed, Jamawn went the legal-remedy route and received an out-of-court settlement with ANGR Holdings that will keep his restaurant dream alive: He keeps the Soul Daddy name, equipment from the New York branch of the restaurant [[see right) and his recipes. “I went from a 10 percent owner [with the three restaurants] to be a 100-percent owner,” he said with pride, in a phone interview. “It’s a great move for me.”

And, well, it’s not 100 percent ownership, he said as an afterthought. “I’ve got a partner, Mike Farrow of the Farrow Group. He’s doing most of the work. I had the name, food and fame, and he’s got the construction.”

That would be construction on the new restaurant, which is located in downtown Detroit on Mount Elliott, right behind Martin Luther King High School.

Continued at: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle...130598833.html