Mary Mahoney's Reopens

By Mike Keller
The Sun Herald

BILOXI — Mary Mahoney's Restaurant reopened at lunchtime Thursday with little fanfare besides the flourishes of beeping dump trucks and heavy demolition equipment.

A blown out Windjammer condominiums and gutted restaurants and office buildings surrounded the restaurant.

Yet inside, about 40 patrons sat amid relative decadence, eating fried soft shell crab almondine and cooling their palates with cups of swirled sorbet.

Bobby Mahoney stood at the end of the new bar — the old one was sucked out the western wall by Katrina's surge — shifting his attention among customers, repairmen and employees.

"It looks real good, Bobby," said businessman Jerry O'Keefe, who was finishing his meal. "Y'all did a real good job."

Five patrons stood at the bar, some having wine and some eating appetizers, all chatting with Mahoney's sister, Eileen Ezell, behind the bar.

"How many people know you're open?" asked Susan Cain, one of the bar customers. "Well, everything's just great. I don't know if I just missed it so much or what."

Pulling away from the bar scene, Bobby Mahoney estimated storm damage at $300,000 to $400,000. They had to replace most of the kitchen equipment, including the massive walk-in cooler and freezer, and the tables and chairs in the south-facing sun room.

The cafe and pub in the south building took water up to the second floor and acted as a surge-break for the French House restaurant, built in 1737, behind it.

"When my mother built (the cafe and pub building), she did it with cinderblock, poured concrete and rebar," Mahoney said. "She didn't want no hurricane knocking this place down."

And the late Mrs. Mahoney built it right. The southernmost wall came down, but the rest of the structure stayed intact.

"She took a standing eight count, but she didn't go down," he said.

The proprietors decided to use the damage to make some changes to the restaurant. The pub, which was gutted anyway, will turn into the cafe's second room.

The hurricane also took several pieces of art, which used to adorn the walls of the dining rooms.

"I had two great ones that we're trying to save," said Mahoney. "It was my mother as Josephine and my daddy as Napoleon."

Ezell said they are again taking reservations and that since reopening at 11 a.m. Thursday, "the phone has been ringing off the hook."