Captain’s Tavern founder Bill Bowers and auto dealer Rick Case
WILLIAM ‘BILL’ BOWERS, 91
wasn’t a sea captain, but even his children lovingly called William “Bill” Bowers simply The Captain.
He was the familiar face at the family seafood restaurant Captain’s Tavern, a place that he built out of an old post office in Pinecrest at a time when it was surrounded by strawberry fields and little else. Even friends warned him he would lose his shirt trying to run a restaurant there.
Nearly 50 years later, he and his restaurant proved his critics wrong and outlived the rest.
Bowers died of complications from heart disease on Sept. 17 at South Miami Hospital, his widow, Audrey Palomino Bowers, said. He was 91.
He built Captain’s Tavern into the kind of restaurant that saw generations of diners, and of his own children, pass through the doors for fresh seafood, prepared simply in a rustic, nautical atmosphere, where the biggest surprise was an encyclopedic wine list to make even a fine-dining restaurant blush.
“He loved the restaurant. That was his life,” daughter Angela Mungovan said.
What he leaves behind is a South Florida success story, similar in spirit to so many others, different only in the details that brought a changed New Yorker to make a new life in South Florida.
Bowers, a native of Mount Kisco, New York, in Westchester County, often told the story of trying to enlist in the Army during the Korean War, but being told by the recruiter that, at a shade under 5-foot-8, he was short. When he sat on the stoop outside crying, the recruiter told him nothing was stopping him from going home and coming back with a pair of shoes with thicker heels.
Bowers served in-country as a radar mechanic, where the best skill he learned was in the kitchen. He learned to love and cook Korean food, then Asian food, and after a short stint back in America, he made his way to Miami in 1969.
He bought the name Captain’s Tavern from a restaurant in Miami Springs and, with the help of friends, renovated an old post office over 18 months into Captain’s Tavern, while maintaining a job as a delivery truck driver from 1-5 a.m. every morning.
HELPFUL REVIEW
Captain’s Tavern opened April Fools Day, 1971. At the end of the first year, he was in the hole $28,000.
Bowers kept at it until a newspaper review lauded his New England clam chowder — and there was a line out the door that weekend. From that day on, Captain’s Tavern was on the map.
Bowers’ goal was that seafood be fresh, inexpensive and plentiful. And that continues to be the formula that powers Captain’s Tavern 49 years later.
“No one put more into this restaurant than he did,” said Bowers’ stepson Dale Palomino, who manages the restaurant.
Captain’s Tavern became a gathering place, not just for generations of south Miami-Dade families, but for Bowers’ family, too.
His children from three marriages have all worked at Captain’s Tavern, including two from his first, three adopted during his second marriage, and his widow’s son, who has helped run the restaurant for the last 37 years.
“That says a lot about a man to me, and I respect him so much,” said Angela Mungovan, whose twin sister and younger brother Bowers adopted during his second marriage when she was 3. “If anyone refers to him as our stepdad, I correct them because he was much more than that to us.”
When Bowers’ granddaughter, Mungovan’s daughter Kaely Camacho, was killed when the car she was riding in was hit by a drunk driver in 2012, BowHe ers put on a wristband with her name and wore it until the day he died.
A SPOT FOR FAMILY AND WINE
That family feel is what brought diners back. That — and an extraordinary wine list for its time.
Frustrated that Miami had a hard time sourcing some of northern California’s top wines in the late 1970s, he traveled to Sonoma, where he met in person with Julio Gallo and told him he wanted to bring his wines to Miami.
He orchestrated an annual fall feast at the Gallos’ famous MacMurray Ranch vineyard, where he invited winemakers from around the region to celebrate the end of the growing season. It coincided with South Florida’s stone-crab season, and Bowers arrived with crates of fresh crab claws and conch for fresh-made fritters. All of them sent Bowers their best wines.
The late Chip Cassidy, who started the wine-education program at Florida International’s hospitality school, regularly sent students to Captain’s Tavern for the incredible variety. Bowers became one of South Florida’s biggest wine connoisseurs and was a regular at a monthly tasting at Cassidy’s house.
The restaurant’s wine list eventually grew to more than 600 labels, and none was priced more than twice the retail price, while other locations regularly mark them up three and four times. An unopened bottle sat on every table.
“A quick nickel is better than a slow dime,” he would tell people when they asked why he kept the prices so low.
The restaurant’s success let him travel across the world, where he took cooking classes with Palomino. He learned to cook Thai cuisine in Bangkok, where he returned five times, and learned the art of Jamaican cuisine from Palomino’s home of Jamaica.
Food inspired from both those countries showed up on the menu. And once a week, the restaurant offers Jamaican classics, such as curry goat and rundown stew, that Palomino’s son, Dale, cooks.
Even as developers nose around to buy the restaurant, the family resists. They hope to maintain Bower’s legacy at Captain’s Tavern: food that remains affordable, plentiful, and paired with a good, cheap bottle of wine popped alongside.
Bowers is survived by Palomino; his children Suzette Gagliano, Dale Palomino, Angela Mungovan, Cynthia Bowers and Greg Bowers; grandchildren Michelle Martinez, Raquel Gagliano, Bill Marion, Tara Fricke, Wayne Marion, Tyler Marion, Bree Ann Camacho, Ethan Palomino, Jada Palomino and several great grandchildren; sisters Nancy Christensen and Jane Stark. He was preceded in death by his parents, William H. Bowers Sr. and Esther Strople, sister Betsy Prout, daughter Sharon Marion and granddaughter Kaely Camacho.
The family will have a small, private burial because of COVID-19 concerns.
THE MAN FOLKS KNEW AS THE CAPTAIN STARTED HIS RESTAURANT 49 YEARS AGO.