Moody Street could never have a more perfect name.
Considered by many to be the lifeblood of the city, the street has just as many moods as the residents who know it so well.
"Oh yeah," Waltham resident Steve Jelloe said while sitting outside The Skellig at 240 Moody St. "Moody Street's a moody street all right."
The ethnically diverse community is well represented along the road.
Yousuf Raheem, owner of the Waltham India Grocery, opened his shop at 393 Moody St. in 1992. He decided on the location for his store because of the city's Indian community.
"But not only Indians come here," he explained. "I have customers of all sorts of ethnicities."
Don Yoviscin, owner of Jake's Dixie Roadhouse at 220 Moody St., said the same customers who go to his restaurant for all-American barbecued ribs, also frequent New Mother India at 336 Moody St., Tom Can Cook at 374 Moody St. and Asian Grill at 265 Moody St.
Ironically, Yoviscin said his domestic cuisine is what makes his restaurant unusual on Moody.
"We have our own niche," he said. "We add to the variety of the other restaurants from other ethnicities, not the other way around."
Because of the variety of food and restaurants on the section of Moody between the commuter rail stop and High Street, it has been dubbed Restaurant Row.
Though the city has no officially recorded number for how many restaurants are located on the seven blocks, store owners estimate that Restaurant Row contains well over 20 eateries.
Mayor Jeannette McCarthy, a third generation city resident, said Moody offers so many choices that it's impossible for her to pick out a favorite.
"There's so many places to go on Moody that you can have a place where you go every night," she explained. "It's great to be able to stay on one street and eat food from around the world depending on your mood."
The area attracts people from all over.
Eric Lin, owner of Ponzu, an Asian fusion restaurant at 286 Moody St., said that before settling on Moody, he had considered opening in surrounding towns two years ago.
"I researched Weston and Newton, too," he said, "But I found out that people from those towns come to Moody Street anyway, so if I opened here, I'd get everybody. We have lots of traffic on this street, and lots of customers."
Raheem, of Waltham India Grocery, concurs.
"People come from all over the state and sometimes from New Hampshire and Connecticut to my store," he said.
Margie Topf is one such customer. Though she lives in Lincoln, Topf said she's a Ponzu regular, saying she eats there at least three times a month.
"Everything on this street has such terrific quality," she said. "I go to the India Grocery, too. You can't get mangos like they have there in bulk at Costco or anything."
Ward 9 City Councilor Robert Logan represents the area that includes Moody Street.
"Everywhere I go, if I mention I'm from Waltham, one of the first things people mention is 'oh yeah, you have a lot of great restaurants down there,"' he said. "Now that's not the only thing we have, but for some reason, that's what people remember about us."
Dining destination
Moody Street is really bustling at night, but the same cannot be said during the day.
"We have enough restaurants around here, I'm tired of them," The Skellig manager Desmond Ruche said. "We've got plenty of apartments on the street so you know that there's people here. But it'd be nice to have some trendy shops around so that they would come out during the day."
The sun seems to melt away potential customers - only businessmen from office parks off Rte. 128 seem to come to Moody Street for the few places serving lunch.
"It's a Catch 22. If there were lunch here, people would come, but there's no lunch because there's no people," Yoviscin said.
Yoviscin explained that while Jake's Dixie Roadhouse used to serve lunch seven days a week, the lack of daytime traffic forced him to limit lunch to Thursdays and Fridays.
"It's always been slow during the day," he said. "But especially after 9/11. All the offices in the office parks went out, and that was about 50 percent of our lunch crowd."
The parking lots, which are jammed at night with the restaurant crowds, have plenty of open spaces during the day. That is partially due to the lack of stores on the street.
Since becoming Restaurant Row, many say Moody has little room for anything else.
Mark Pochesci owns the Global Thrift store at 322 Moody St., one of the only stores on the street. But unlike those who go to the restaurants, Pochesci's customers are mostly Waltham residents.
"People from the other towns can just go to the Arsenal Mall (in Watertown) if they want clothes," he said.
Still, Pochesci said he does benefit from wealthier communities' higher economic status through donations.
"A lot of our donations come from people in the surrounding communities with a higher standard of living," he said. "We wouldn't have anything to sell without them."
On Friday and Saturday nights, the street is a hub of leisurely activities, from dining to movie viewing. Residents from neighboring towns pour in, making parking a scarce commodity. College students from nearby Brandeis University and Bentley College also flood into the restaurants and bars.
Tempo at 474 Moody St., Solea at 388 Moody St., and Tuscan Grill at 361 Moody St., represent the more expensive dining places on the stretch, with main courses costing more than $25.
But other restaurants offer quality cuisine on the cheap.
"Where else but Moody Street can I buy a samosa for 80 cents?" asked Jodi Rosenbaum, executive director for More Than Words bookstore.
Because of its variety and number of independent businesses, Moody Street has been compared to Harvard Square.
"They both have character," said Lizzy's Homemade Ice Cream owner Nick Pappas, who has a shop at 256 Moody St. and in Boston. "Not that they have a specific characteristic, but that they are unique and not at all bland."
In recent years, however, Frank McLaughlin, owner of Watch City Brewery at 256 Moody St., says Harvard Square has become a victim of the U.S. economy.
"The little shops couldn't survive and all sold out to big chain places now. There's still a lot of cool places, but it lost its uniqueness," he said. "That's not happening to Moody, though. The city enjoys the non-chain restaurants, we all put our foot down when they try to bring a chain in here."
McLughlin said Moody Street's personality has helped it survive the struggling economy.
While there are some vacant storefronts, most restaurants are full of business at night, and some restaurants, like New Mother India, have even remodeled.
"We don't have chain restaurants around here," said Logan. "But that's what keeps us busy. It gives Restaurant Row its flavor - no pun intended."
The diversity of Moody also gives the street a sense of camaraderie, best expressed in the relationship between competing business owners.
Ruche, who manages The Skellig said Sadie's Saloon & Eatery is his favorite place on the street to eat, despite the fact that the similar cuisine makes the restaurant his competition. Sadie's is at 9 Pine St., but can be seen from Moody.
"We're all friends," he said, explaining that The Skellig also sells beer brewed by neighboring Watch City Brewery. "Competition is a good thing. Everybody gets along well here."
And it's that sense of community that gives Moody its personality.
The spirit of Waltham
"The fact that we haven't sold ourselves out to chains shows that the community holds itself in high regard," said Alex Green, owner of Back Pages Books at 289 Moody St..
A former San Francisco resident, Green graduated from Brandeis University in 2004, and said he liked Waltham so much that he decided to stay and open the store.
"Waltham was the start of the Industrial Revolution, but not the start of the first labor riots, and I think that says a lot about us - that we all care about each other," he said. "We look to the past and how we were a self-starting town and find new, brilliant ways to revive what we used to have. Our future isn't a shot in the dark, we're just continuing on with the uniqueness that the past gives us."
And when you consider Moody's past, it's not difficult to see why it is where it is today.
The street got its name from Paul Moody, a local mechanic who, in 1814, built the first American power looms, starting the Industrial Revolution in Waltham, and across America, without the help of the-then corporate leaders of the Boston Manufacturing Company.
That Moody the man was a self-starter makes perfect sense when you look at Moody the street.
As Green says, "we don't need corporate America to come in and tell our city what its soul is. It's right here on Moody Street."
