Restaurateurs envision a new and improved version of their grand old eatery
By Brett Anderson
Restaurant writer
As 2005 bled into 2006, the office meetings between John Montgomery and Cindy and Tommy Mandina hardened into high-stakes tic-tac-toe
Montgomery, the architect hired by the Mandinas to advise them on the rebuilding of their flood-ravaged 75-year-old family restaurant and Mid-City landmark, would unveil fresh plans and reiterate the litany of codes, regulations and unknowns that impeded the project's progress. Tommy would mark the plan with changes and imply with flashes of prickliness his frustration that the real work had yet to begin.
Tommy and Montgomery were friendly but temperamentally at odds from the get-go.
Montgomery described his role, particularly in the project's early stages, as "almost like psychiatry." Tommy dipped his toe into the corporate world as a young man just long enough to have realized that he couldn't be told what to do. As the weeks wore on, the architect's fixation on acquiring the information necessary to produce a plan to guide a construction crew started to feel, from Tommy's perspective, too much like doing nothing.
So in February 2006, as the first post-Katrina Carnival parades clogged traffic in New Orleans' less-damaged neighborhoods, Tommy met at Mandina's with the building professionals he had assembled to resurrect his restaurant. Montgomery was not in attendance.
Factoring in the two flooded houses behind the restaurant, both of which the family owned, the Mandina's project encompassed three buildings. The first order of business, Tommy explained, would be to tear down the two houses.
.
The front stoop was one of the few original features of the restaurant that was never threatened. Inside, where dust frosted the floors and the walls had been stripped to their studs, Tommy led a tour with a flashlight. "I want you to give me some drainage that works this time," he said to Leon Molinario Jr., a plumber he's known for 25 years.
Wandering into a cavity behind the space the bar used to occupy, Tommy announced, to no one in particular, "We need to decide what we'll do with the ceiling."
Ritchie Cortez, the electrician, suggested tearing it down. Tommy wondered aloud if that would complicate matters for Tom Jacobs, who would be installing Mandina's first-ever central air-conditioning system.
"I'm waiting to hear what the architect says," Jacobs said.
"I'll have the plans to you as soon as the fella gives them to me," Tommy said later. "Then you can get me estimates."
Tommy, who renovates houses "as a hobby," is comfortable conversing in the vernacular of carpenters, plumbers and electricians.
But the less tangible skill-set he acquired over a lifetime running a small business in New Orleans proved just as valuable in bringing the business back from ruin. The foundation of these talents is a tolerance for the institutional inefficiencies Katrina exacerbated, but it also is possible that stubbornness and gall are Mandina family traits.
"In reality, you're supposed to have the plans drawn and submitted to the city. Well, there is no city. There is no City Hall," Tommy explained matter-of-factly in March. He was meeting with Cindy at a coffee shop in Metairie.
"So she went down there and groveled and cried and got the demolition permit and the renovation permit," he continued. "(Montgomery) said you couldn't do that. Well, we did."
Putting the cart before the horse gave the Mandina's project early momentum but did nothing to improve the environment surrounding it.
In March, Montgomery brought plans to the restaurant for a meeting with the crew.
"From what I understand, there's one electrical inspector in the city," he said.
"Nah," Cortez quipped. "There's two."
Tommy professed to like the architect's proposed layout, and Montgomery was eager to see construction begin, if only "so Tommy quits changing things."
One alteration Tommy pondered was moving the handicap bathrooms to the restaurant's rear. When asked if it would cost more to do so, Molinario replied, "None of the pipes down there are any good anyway. It won't matter."
Tommy wondered about using propane or diesel to power the kitchen should another storm knock out the lines for natural gas, which still was unavailable in the neighborhood around Mandina's. "Right now I talk to Entergy and say, 'Hey, Entergy, this is what I got' -- but you're talking to someone in North Carolina," Molinario said. "So let's wait before you go and spend $15,000."
Cortez concurred: "Entergy's grids are no good right now."
Furthermore, Molinario offered, "I can't talk to anyone about your gas because of Homeland Security" -- a reference to that federal agency's regulations limiting access to information about natural gas lines, a safeguard against potential terrorist threats.
"Homeland Security? Those are the people that run FEMA," Tommy deadpanned. "My confidence level is really high."
The considerable task of gutting Mandina's brought little sense of accomplishment. In fact, it only clarified the immensity of the job ahead.
When Tommy walked back inside his restaurant, he looked around, but there wasn't much to see: a skeletal box of two-by-fours surrounding a brick fireplace that the Mandinas didn't know existed before the demolition.
It was cold. Tommy had just convened a meeting of seven craftsmen, none of whom lifted a tool to work. When they would return to do so was unclear when they left.
Tommy dropped the rolled-up plans he'd been carrying under his arm like a bundle of twigs. They landed on top of an air-conditioning unit on the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"You sure you don't want to sell the place and move away?" he asked himself before falling silent, perhaps in hope that someone would answer.
. . . . . . .
Coming Tuesday: Cindy Mandina tries to preserve a family tradition that her great-great grandfather started at the turn of the century.
. . . . . . .
Restaurant writer Brett Anderson can be reached at banderson@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3353.
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Landmark decisions
A five-part series chronicling the ruin and restoration of a classic New Orleans restaurant.
Sunday: Assessing the damage
Today: Architects re-imagine an iconic locale
Tuesday: A family history: Sicily to New Orleans -- and Baton Rouge and Mandeville
Wednesday: As reopening day nears, the bills mount
Thursday: Up from the ashes, but not out of the woods
Read previous days' installments at www.nola.com