A vow to rise from the ashes
Owner of Cleburne Cafeteria says he’ll rebuild 75-year-old mainstay
In a city where the culinary landscape is characterized by cutting-edge cuisine, trendy restaurants and celebrity chefs championing farm-totable fare, the Cleburne Cafeteria was increasingly an oddity. But the eatery, celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, was something those fancypants businesses could only aspire to.
It was, for the generations of Houstonians who lined up in droves in front of its steam tables and loaded up their trays with good, down-home cooking, a beloved institution.
So when longtime owner George Mickelis got a call around midnight Monday that his fire and burglar alarms had gone off, it was with a deep sense of dread that he rushed over to the cafeteria on Bissonnet to find his life’s work, the only job he’s ever had, engulfed in flames.
It was the second time in three decades the restaurant had burned. But in that first fire, in 1990, his father’s oil paintings were salvaged, and they now graced the walls of the building burning down in front of him as he stood helplessly outside.
He wasn’t allowed inside to see if he could save
them. Forty-five minutes into battling the blaze, the roof collapsed; it took close to four hours to get the fire under control, and Mickelis still couldn’t go inside to see the extent of the damage. He didn’t know how many, if any, of his father’s paintings would survive.
“This was my father’s legacy,” Mickelis said Tuesday morning.
He had been outside his restaurant for almost eight hours straight, pacing back and forth between firefighters, employees — many of whom arrived for work dressed in their Cleburne chef jackets — and well-wishing passers-by.
He walked across the ashcovered parking lot, sometimes stopping to look silently at the roofless structure with its broken windows and torn signage. A fire hose sprayed a hot spot that still sparked inside.
Father’s American Dream
Mickelis’ father, Nick Mickelis, emigrated from Patmos, Greece, in 1948 and worked at his brother’s restaurant as a dishwasher for two years before later buying Cleburne Cafeteria, then located off Fannin and Cleburne in downtown Houston.
For Mickelis, the cafeteria is the manifestation of his father’s American Dream. After Nick died in 1989, George carried on the family business along with his mother Pat, who is now 92.
“And it’s all gone,” he said, adding that, just as they did after the first fire, the family would rebuild. Alex Brennan-Martin, president of Brennan’s of Houston, said he understands the loss the Mickelis family is feeling — his family’s restaurant, Brennan’s, was gutted by a fire that swept through the historic Smith Street structure during Hurricane Ike in September 2008. (It reopened after extensive renovations in February 2010).
“It does leave you speechless,” Brennan-Martin said. “Words fail. It’s completely emotional. My heart goes out to them.”
Many of Cleburne’s oil paintings featured Patmos, a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Nick painted before coming to America, using a makeshift brush made out of donkey tail strands and a combination of egg wash and berry juice.
In America, he finally got to use real paint, George Mickelis said, and most of the restaurant’s paintings were created in 1969.
On Tuesday morning, traffic crept along Bissonnet as drivers snapped pictures of the devastation. Family friends, suppliers and fellow restaurant owners joined Mickelis as he waited for further word. Some brought bottled water and iced tea. One woman wore a T-shirt that read “Everybody Loves George,” with a picture of Mickelis on the front.
“Hey, buddy,” said one man with a pause. “Unbelievable.”
“It’s too much for one guy,” Mickelis said.
Frank Demeris, owner of Charlie’s Bar-B-Que in Bellaire, grew up with Mickelis. He arrived close to 4 a.m. Tuesday to lend a hand. He’d helped out when the family rebuilt Cleburne after the 1990 blaze. Demeris has been through a couple of fires himself. Every time, the restaurant has come back bigger and stronger, he said.
That Mickelis already is thinking about rebuilding is not surprising, said Kathy ChristieDasingenis, spokeswoman for Christie’s Seafood & Steaks, a Galveston institution that began in 1917 as a food and drink stand.
“There’s no question that’s your first response. It’s that Greek can-do spirit,” said Christie-Dasingenis. “Especially businesses like George’s restaurant and our restaurant that were built by immigrants. You don’t let something like that go overnight. So it doesn’t surprise me that George is going to rebuild.”
Words of encouragement
Longtime customers such as Alicia Quinn and Nadine Bay look forward to Cleburne being back in business. They’ve been regulars since Nick and Pat Mickelis ran the place, before its first rebirth.
Bay estimates she eats there about once a week, but back when she didn’t worry about weight gain or cholesterol, she ate there daily. Her favorite items — lemon pound cake, chicken and dumplings, squash casserole and the Greek salad.
“Must I go on?” she asked. It was the home cooking, quality of ingredients and good portion size that kept bringing them back.
They came by Tuesday afternoon to offer Mickelis a hug, and some words of encouragement.
“You’ve got your life, and it didn’t happen in your home,” Bay said.
Later Tuesday, Mickelis and Demeris finally walked through the property. Many of the frames remained intact, but the paintings inside had burned away.
Except for two firefighters had managed to save — paintings of Patmos at sunset featuring whispy clouds, a multicolored sky and the island Nick Mickelis left 68 years ago.