Viking Bilking

There has been a Baltic Curry shop across the street and a little down the block from my office for years. I never bought anything there, although I often wondered how the logo of a viking and the Baltic Sea related to curry. Colleagues have said that the take-out curry's not bad for a change of pace lunch, but I never got around to trying it.

Now I see that they've gone out of business. The article makes it sound as if the owners of the chain were crooks, but it also makes me wonder how careless the investors in the 2006/'07 deal must have been, when Baltic already had a problem in 2003.

It's true that I hadn't heard about either of the problems, nor had I noticed that the chain failed six months ago. I did vaguely wonder why a completely different curry shop had opened last fall, right next door to Baltic. I rarely walk on that side of the street, though.

And I'm unlikely--even if I had the money--to invest in a chain of curry shops with a name like Baltic and a viking for a logo.