If all goes according to plan a new Saline restaurant, Mangiamo's, translated as "Let's eat!" will open by the end of the year.
Co-owner Laurie Toarmina says her family is doing some final cleaning out and finishing of the inside before it opens sometime in the next month or so. The outside of the 120-year-old building, the former Kelly's restaurant on West Michigan Avenue, needed only some paint; the new owners installed all new equipment in the kitchen and added a wall to make part of the interior an ice cream parlor.
"There's been a lot of work done," she says. "There's been a lot of cleaning. It's been closed for a long time."
Other improvements included a remodeling and re-tiling of the bathrooms, and work in the basement. They also added a staircase to the second floor.
Laurie, husband Peter, brother-in-law Louis Toarmina, and sisters and husbands Dr. Rose and Ron Tolson and Mary and Len Sheko, are all pitching in to make the project happen. "We are plugging away, doing most of the work ourselves," Toarmina says.
The family is trying to buy items for their restaurant that are made in the United States, and some are taking longer to get than foreign products.
Their main project over the next few weeks is to experiment with the menu and have everything nailed down before the opening. A soft opening is planned for year-end, with a celebration sometime in January.
Toarmina appreciates the calls they've gotten from future customers, and how patient they have been. "We just want to make sure everything's perfect," she says. "It really looks like a restaurant in here."
The Mangiamo's building had been vacant for more than five years, and the 10,000-square-foot second floor even longer. The family would like to see that space renovated into offices or loft apartments. The former Kelly's is actually a combination of two 100-year-old structures that originally served as dry goods stores, traces of which are still visible on the exterior. The family has preserved this heritage as well as other historical aspects of the building.
Source: Laurie Toarmina, co-owner of Mangiamo's
Writer: Kristin Lukowski
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