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Resurrection of a Beloved Restaurant By Lisa Rabasca Winter might be lingering, but inside the newly opened Mediterranee Restaurant in Great Falls, it feels warm and sunny. The bright yellow stucco walls are decorated with paintings of the French seaside, reminiscent of the country's famed impressionists. The tables are covered with colored cloths. On a recent snowy afternoon, chef and owner Jacques Imperato was standing behind the bar, wearing a Mediterranee T-shirt and telling two customers about how he ended up in Great Falls. They told him they were glad to have him in the neighborhood. On Thanksgiving morning 2003, a fire destroyed Imperato's original Mediterranee restaurant, which stood on the corner of Lee Highway and Monroe Street in Arlington. The restaurant was booked solid that weekend, not just for Thanksgiving dinner but for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, too. "It was very bad timing," he said. Imperato, 45, lost more than just his restaurant that morning. Plates, glasses and other equipment he had bought for a catering service he was starting were destroyed, as was his extensive wine collection. It's not just the value of the wine, he said, but the memories. "Some of the wine can't be replaced, because the vintage is gone." Some of the gems he will miss the most include a 1961 Sauternes, a 1986 Meursault and a 1990 Rothschild Pauillac. But that is all in the past. After 15 months of searching for a new location, Imperato and his staff from the original Mediterranee have reopened the restaurant at 10123 Colvin Run Rd. in Great Falls. The story of how Mediterranee rose from the ashes says a lot about what a popular restaurant with a faithful following means to a community. Imperato's staff is loyal, too; many had no trouble switching from Arlington to Fairfax County. "They dropped whatever they were doing to return," Imperato said. His maitre d', Francoise Arnaud, 44, had been working at Cassatt's in Arlington, where Imperato is a consultant. Danillo Gudiel, 23, his sous-chef, had been working at Lavandou in Cleveland Park, and head waitress Virginie Michel, 24, had been at Au Pied Bistro in Georgetown. They all say there was never any question about whether they'd return once Imperato reopened. His staff is like a family, Imperato said. "Everyone has a function." In fact, Imperato's family also works at the restaurant. His wife, Gunilla, is the bookkeeper, his 18-year-old son is a waiter on weekends and his 15-year-old daughter is a busboy. He also has a 7-year-old daughter. "The little one wants to work, too, but she's too little," he said. Imperato had hoped to rebuild Mediterranee in its original location but couldn't come to an agreement with the property owner. He searched Arlington for a new location but found land was too expensive. "Businesses, big corporations, are coming in willing to pay any price," he said. While he was looking, Imperato helped out at Cassatt's, an informal family-friendly cafe just a few blocks from the original Mediterranee. Owner Art Hauptman said he asked Imperato to help him develop a dinner menu and manage the kitchen because Mediterranee was his favorite local restaurant. "He's a great cook with a very eclectic background," said Hauptman. "We benefited from his expertise and the fact that we drew a fair number of customers who had been his regular customers." Maude Lapychak, 59, of Falls Church was one of the Mediterranee regulars who visited Cassatt's because Imperato was working there. "Customers get to know [Imperato] because he always walks around the restaurant and talks to the patrons," Lapychak said. This past Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, Hauptman turned his restaurant over to Imperato, allowing him to cook all the food and change the atmosphere from informal family to French Riviera. When Mediterranee patrons found out, New Year's Eve was booked within two weeks, Imperato said. It was, he said, a way to keep the restaurant alive until he could reopen. While Mediterranee's name remains the same, Imperato pointed out differences between the two restaurants. The Arlington location, in a converted house, was more country and homey, he said, while the new restaurant is more stylish, with a European flair. The new location, he said, has features the old Mediterranee lacked, such as the polished wood floor and a bar, where patrons can wait for a table and the staff can keep an eye out to make sure customers have everything they need to enjoy their meal. Because the restaurant is just a few miles off Route 7, the location feels more central, he said. There is plenty of parking and space for an outdoor terrace in the summer, he said, two features the Arlington location also lacked. He hopes to plant an herb garden outside, too. The menu also is different. At the Arlington location, he served traditional French dishes -- bouillabaisse and cassoulet. At the new restaurant, the dishes are based on Imperato's own recipes, which combine unexpected ingredients, such as duck over sauerkraut and cabbage in a Szechwan peppercorn and red wine sauce, or sea scallops with fava bean hummus, sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus. "This is more of a place to try to experiment," he said. One thing that hasn't changed, Imperato said, is the restaurant's emphasis on taste and customer service. Everything is still made from scratch, except the bread, which he hopes to begin baking himself, as he did at the Arlington location. The size has stayed the same, with seating for 50 patrons. A bigger restaurant, he said, would make it harder to keep the food quality consistent. Although Imperato was trained in France in classical and nouvelle cuisine, he said his cooking is influenced by his family heritage, which is French, Italian and Spanish. He was born in Algeria when it was a French colony, and the logo for his restaurant, a sun with oversize feet, represents pied noir, which means black feet, a name given to French citizens born in North Africa. His cooking is also influenced by a three-year stint in India at a French and Italian catering company. Because the ingredients there were different from what he had worked with in France -- for instance, the butter and cream came from a buffalo instead of a cow -- he learned to use herbs and seasonings to change the taste of food. "You had to taste the food and turn it into what you wanted," he said. Curiosity about big cars and rock and roll -- in particular, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino -- brought Imperato to the United States in 1981. In his first years in the Washington area, he worked at Maison Blanche, Tiberio, Donna Adele and Lavandou. He opened Mediterranee in 1996. Until the fire, Imperato said, he didn't realize how popular his restaurant was, because he was so focused on the business. Since Mediterranee reopened, he estimates that nearly all of the regular patrons of the Arlington restaurant have come to dine in Great Falls. "Taste is what brings them back," he said. "Taste and seasoning." Mediterranee serves lunch Tuesday-Friday and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. There is a Sunday brunch. Closed Mondays. For more information, call 703-757-9300 or go to www.mediterraneerestaurant.com. © 2005 The Washington Post Company |