Nice start kaszeta!  I see a lot of old “friends” so far.  You don’t say on what day of the week your Death March took place, but I can tell you if it was a weekend, you were smart to hit Don Pedro early in the morning.

We did the Death March on 5/5.  The staff at Don Pedro mentioned that they were already unusually busy for a Saturday due to Cinco de Mayo.  They moved three full trays of meat and chicharones out the door in the 15 minutes we were there.  But none of the 8:30 am business was eat in except us.  This worked for us here.  At Al’s, we had to wait for them to open.  But it also meant having to skip some good places since they weren’t open yet.  Ahh, the tradeoffs… (if we had started later, we’d have the other problem on the tail end, since we didn’t get to our dinner location until 7pm.  It takes some serious time to walk that far)
 

Everyone seems to live in relative peace and harmony in spite of that crossover competition.

Mario is an excessively friendly and outgoing guy.  He told us several other Italian Ice places to check out, and told us he believes in never badmouthing your competition, since he’d rather get along with everyone.