Restaurant reopens after two burglaries in two nights
Just hours after being burgled for the second time in two days, westend restaurant The Soca Kitchen bounced back to host a wedding Thursday night.
“Little by little, we’re rebuilding everything,” said the Spanish eatery’s chef and owner, Daniela Manrique. “Everybody was here helping; family members, friends were running to the LCBO and buying all the liquor for the restaurant because we didn’t have anything. They (the thieves) left us with three bottles.”
Less than 48 hours earlier, a burglar had forced his way through a back door into the Holland Avenue restaurant at 3 a.m. Wednesday and stole “everything he could,” Manrique said, from kitchen knives and equipment to laptops and iPads.
But even more shocking to Manrique was the vandalism. “This person made a huge mess of the restaurant really. He tore up fridges, threw food on the floor, tore off the paper towel dispenser, he made a disaster in the office, all the papers everywhere.”
On security footage, a man can be seen trying to smash the restaurant’s point-of-sale system and throwing its phone system down the stairs, Manrique said. They discovered the damage when they arrived to open the restaurant Wednesday, and called the police.
After handing over the security tape to officers and cleaning up as much as they could, they closed Soca for the evening. Then, someone broke into the restaurant again overnight.
Police confirmed they were investigating two burglaries at 93 Holland Ave. The first was reported Wednesday afternoon and the second Thursday morning.
Manrique doesn’t believe the Wednesday night burglary was committed by the same person as the night before, based on the security tapes.
“I guess there wasn’t much left,” she said, but the burglar still made off with almost all of the liquor that remained in the restaurant.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was here by myself when I first opened the restaurant, and as soon as I realized, I saw mud-prints on the kitchen floor, I’m like, ‘No, this didn’t happen again.’”
The Soca Kitchen has been open four years, and this week was the first time anyone had broken in, Manrique said. To have it happen twice, back to back, left her predominantly female staff “a little scared.”
Shaken as they were, they had a wedding to host in a matter of hours. Manrique said she emailed the couple, telling them not to worry, and that they’d do “everything in our power” to be ready for the big night.
“And they’re having their wedding right now,” she said over the phone Thursday night.
They probably wouldn’t have reopened the restaurant so quickly if the wedding hadn’t been on the schedule, she acknowledged. “But, at the end of the day, it’s a business and you have to keep it running. That’s the challenge; we can’t really afford to be closed just because of a burglary … we have to pay rent.”
They’ll take some time to assess the value of their losses and damage when they close as normal on Monday, she said, but estimated the total would be more than $10,000. Thankfully, the restaurant is insured.
For now, The Soca Kitchen is open regular hours, and they’ve fixed the alarm system that didn’t go off during the burglaries.
“We’re hoping they catch the people, but I doubt it, it’s so hard,” Manrique said, noting that the most important thing is that the restaurant’s employees are safe.
“With the material, you can still go off and buy it, but if anybody harms any of my guys, then that’s a different story.”