May 05--April was full of lows and highs for Dave Glatt.
On April 11, Glatt closed his 44-year-old Evanston restaurant, Dave's Italian Kitchen, with little more than a Facebook announcement and a single line on the official website ("We're Closed Forever! Thank You!"). Yet, just a few weeks later, Glatt announced that his restaurant, a community mainstay, may be given new life.
After Glatt's initial closing announcement, I interviewed him about what led to the abrupt closure -- his staff wasn't informed before the hatchet drop, and neither was the community. "Until the very end, I thought I'd find some way to keep it going," he said.
"Basically, it came down to debt. I couldn't generate enough sales to maintain that space." Indeed, as reported in Tribune sister publication The Pioneer Press, Glatt would be filing for "bankruptcy resulting from a number of failed business decisions associated with managing a 6,000-square-foot restaurant."
Glatt opened the most recent location of Dave's, at 1635 Chicago Ave., in 2000 but, since the 2008 recession, had lost nightly business, he said: "It was a 200-seat restaurant that would only fill up on Fridays and Saturdays." Besides the difficulty of maintaining the sizable space, which cost nearly $17,500 a month in rent, Glatt also had to contend with his large, four-page menu.
"Oh God, it was too big," he said. "You want to attract new people, so you add more menu items, but that just drives up costs. We did too many items, and we could never raise prices as much as we wanted."
In the end, "the math was just so wrong that I couldn't get past it," Glatt said. With 20 employees to let go, "the last of the money went to tilting at that windmill," he said, paying back what he could, despite an empty savings account.
And that was that, according to Glatt, at least as of two days after announcing the end of Dave's. On April 13, he told the Tribune his next plans were to pursue a memoir and cookbook project based on his time as a restaurateur. Reopening a restaurant was the last thing on his mind, if he'd ever reopen at all.
Since then, though, Glatt has postponed his writing plans: On a Facebook post, which has now garnered more than 1,000 likes, 350 shares and 200 comments, Glatt announced that he would be opening a "much smaller more streamlined version" of his restaurant, called Dave's IK. "I look forward to justifying your kindnesses," Glatt wrote in that post.
In a follow-up interview, the restaurateur tells me he was approached by Evanston City Council members about reopening his restaurant, this time at 815 Noyes St. Paul Zalmezak, Evanston's senior economic development coordinator, connected Glatt with Harry Major, a landlord of the 1,200-square-foot space, formerly home to DMK Kitchen and, later, Arlen's Chicken.
The proposed restaurant will seat 40 people, which Glatt sees as much more manageable. "It will feel like my first restaurant. I like that," he said, referring to the original Dave's Italian Kitchen, which he opened in the '70s.
For Zalmezak, this is an opportunity to retain a local business and preserve jobs. "Banks don't like to deal with restaurants, (even) under ideal conditions," he said in a phone interview. "But you consider a deal like this because of the character of a guy like Dave. He's been in the community for 44 years, and clearly there's a strong client base." Citing the current void of business on Noyes, along with student and theater foot traffic, Zalmezak predicts Dave's IK will be better poised to succeed.
The project hinges on funding, with Glatt applying for a loan through the city. On a recent Wednesday night, Evanston's Economic Development Committee met to discuss Glatt's $30,000 loan proposal for restaurant equipment. According to Zalmezak, the committee approved to move the proposal to a full City Council vote, scheduled for May 9. At that point, the council will consider Glatt's new corporate structure and business plan before awarding the loan.
Glatt projects his total costs to reopen at a minimum of $60,000. In addition to the city loan, he told the Tribune, a friend and fan of his restaurant, who requested anonymity, also lent him $30,000. "I won't be the owner of Dave's IK," Glatt said.
Major, the landlord, is also offering Glatt generous terms on the new restaurant, including discounted rent for the first two years and money to finance improvement costs. "The space is already great; it just needs a few updates," Glatt said.
Together, all of these developments mean that Glatt hopes to resuscitate Dave's as soon as the end of May. While he waits on the city's loan approval, Glatt is redesigning his menu to be more agile and has already hired back nine of his former employees for the new venture. Most of all, he is looking forward to getting back into the kitchen.
"I've really missed my food," he said. "It's not a happy day without it."
jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @joeybear85
