In a new local celebrity interview series, DiscoverSD.com selects two San Diegans who are experts in their fields and orchestrates an organic meeting of the minds. First up, our guest editor Greg Strangman interviews the man of the moment, Jon Mangini.
Greg Strangman is the Founder and Managing Principle of L.W.P. Group, boasting over 18 years of experience in both real estate development and restaurant ownership. His local portfolio spans the Onyx Room nightclub, Pearl Hotel, UnderBelly restaurant and Community, an affordable brand of urban apartment buildings that inspire social interaction, among others.
Jon Mangini is a San Diego restaurateur known for casual neighborhood eateries with an urban edge, such as BASIC Kitchen + Bar, URBN Coal Fired Pizza and Gang Kitchen, the new Asian concept invading an industrial warehouse downtown, slated to open Summer 2012.
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Greg: Thank you for inviting me down to URBN to talk a little bit about your opening of BASIC and what your whole thought process was when you opened that in 2006. (pictured left)
Jon: To back track a little bit, I tried doing a lot of places before that that just didn’t work out, wherever I was. I’m from Connecticut. But I was working for a restaurant company, traveling around the United States, and everywhere that it took me I tried to do my own place. I was always interested in doing my own thing. With all the ones that failed, BASIC actually worked out. It’s probably the one that I always had in the back of my head that I wanted to do. I had a little library of different kinds of places that I wanted to do – a bar with pizza, an Asian restaurant, an Italian concept.
The company I was working for, CB5 Restaurant Group, they used to own the food and beverage at the W Hotel.
Greg: Is that what brought you to San Diego?
Jon: That’s what brought me out there in the first place.
Greg: So you came out here with the company?
Jon: We did a hotel and restaurant in Miami. I was commuting back and forth from Connecticut to Miami. And then the W started going well with food and beverage – Rice, Magnet, Beach, up on top, the beach bar. Everything started going really well and they had an offer to sell back to Starwood. They called me out to keep everything running right, and then Starwood bought the leases back.
At that point it was just kind of a coincidence. I’m always looking, but I was in East Village walking around…
Greg: I was going to ask: Why East Village? Versus Little Italy or Gaslamp?
Jon: They were already almost three quarters through the build out of the ballpark, so I knew that was coming. I just took a walk down there one day, and it was probably days from when the landlord put up a for rent sign.
Greg: It’s a really cool building. It’s a really cool building.
Jon: Ya. Actually you know, I walked over there because I was looking at the building that’s across -- where The Corner is. The guys that were supposed to meet me, they weren’t there. I knocked on the door, no one was around, so I walked back on the other side of the street, I look up and I see a for lease sign.
Greg: To back track a tiny bit, at this stage in the game, PETCO Park is open?
Jon: No, when I was building out, was their first year playing at PETCO.
Greg: So you were a pioneer over in that area. What other businesses were over there?
Jon: There wasn’t anything. There really wasn’t anything.
Greg: Okay, so you were the first ones.
Jon: You know, when you say a pioneer, I think of…
Greg: Maybe more of a pioneer in the new ages then.
Jon: Exactly. I definitely saw East Village coming around. I didn’t love Gaslamp back then. I didn’t love Fifth Avenue. Little Italy was still a little sleepy back then. The East Village, the grit really just pulled me into East Village. When I talked to CCDC, I knew what was gonna happen, what was going on. I knew that things had to come with baseball season, so I took a shot at it.
But let me tell you, when I was building the place out during ball season, it was a lot of fun. I’d let friends of mine park inside, because you know it was an old garage. They’d park and go to the game. I’d run over and go to the game and come back to build a little more. (pictured left)
Greg: So, what was the whole big picture you were looking for – pizza and drinks, or a place to hang out? I mean it seems very -- it’s a little bit edgy and very industrial in some ways. What was your design aesthetic?
Jon: Well I wanted to -- there are a lot of places that were, San Diego obviously has a lot of beach bars, some dive bars. And then I saw everything kind of jump up a little bit. Everyone started getting into bottle service and everything kinda jumped. And so I said, let me hit it in the middle. I wanted to do a place that was, kinda a lot like places that are out on the East Coast. Someone grabs an old gas station or an old parking garage and they throw a bar in it and they run with it. It’s done all the time. But there wasn’t anything like that out here.
I fell in love -- when I walked in the building, I fell in love with the brick, and the […] tiles, and the concrete floor. And so I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I said this will work perfect. And so I’m across from the ballpark, so I didn’t want to do sushi, I didn’t want to do high-end, so what will work with the ballpark? I didn’t want to do hot dogs. I had a good friend of mine growing up who worked at some of the great pizza joints in Connecticut. I grabbed him and made him move out here for a little while. I had the bar end of it, I had the restaurant end of it, so I brought him out to do the -- for his expertise on the pizza, and we put it together.
I was a little worried. Everybody told me, you know, you can’t do good pizza in San Diego -- the water, this that. I remember after we built the place out, sitting down to put the oven in, we made our first pizza. I brought my wife in, who’s probably my biggest critic, and she knows East Coast pizza better than anybody.
Greg: Is she from the East Coast as well then?
Jon: Ya, ya we’re both from Connecticut.
Greg: Cool.
Jon: And she said you nailed it, I mean this is it, tastes just like back home. So I said okay, I guess it’s not -- we tweaked the recipe a little bit and we went for it.
It definitely wasn’t easy. It was a rocky road. I remember walking outside at five, six, seven o’clock at night when I was building the place out, not when there was a ballgame going on, but when it was a normal night, and walking outside and hearing the crickets chirp and seeing the homeless individuals kind of moving in and bedding down for the night and sleeping in the front. I called my wife up and said, honey, am I nuts? What am I doing? This is crazy. She said just hang in there, it will come, and it did. It came and it worked out well.
We opened in April of ’06, which was the second year, and we opened on, not Opening Day, but the second day that the Padres were playing. We were in there training, I had my staff in there, we were just supposed to be kind of training, and I saw all these people walking by. I’m looking around at my staff, everybody knew what to do. My bartenders, a lot of them whom I worked with at the W, I brought them over. One of my partners is from the W, he was one of my bartenders at the W, and so he’s behind the bar. And I said this is crazy, go to the bank and get some ones and fives, throw them in the register and let’s open. And we opened up and it was -- it was a blood bath. Ya know, the computers went down, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. But we ended up doing great numbers and we got through it. And I believe that if I had waited another night, everything would have happened anyways. My computers would have gone down the next night...
And so, to open during baseball season, just kinda gave us a really nice runway. We got through it, and then sales kinda dipped down after baseball season, but really we were just at that point, cleaning up the mess and getting ready for what we hoped would be a quick off season, and it is.
Greg: What about the design aesthetic? It seems like, I’m looking around in here, it seems like you use a lot of raw materials, and it’s very casual which I think, like you talked about, plays really well with basically sports fans. But yet it’s not so sports fans where it’s just a gang load of people wearing just Padres jerseys or Chargers things. It really has that comfortable feel about it.
Jon: When I was building the place out, I knew that I had to build something that worked for 80-90 days a year when there are baseball games, but it also had to work on the other…
Greg: 270 days.
Jon: You’re better at math and I am. [laughs] And so that was the medium. I thought pizza -- how great. It can work for baseball, but it also works year-round. And I figured I’d do something gritty enough that it could handle the baseball crowd, and casual enough to handle that, but something that -- it can kinda be sexed up a bit for our Friday and Saturday nights. I never wanted it to be over the top. I wanted it to be casual and cool and fun.
It’s funny when I was building it, people would pop in the door as they were going to a baseball game and they’d look in and say -- what are you doing with that wall, or what are you going to do with that floor, or what are you -- nothing! That’s all done, I’m ready to go.
Greg: It’s funny you say that, because when I walk by the sidewalks there, out front, and there’s a lot of dirt on the other side of the side walk, I’ve heard people say, oh that doesn’t look very refined. And I said, I think that’s intentional, that it’s looking very gritty and urban.
Jon: People just didn’t get it. When I said I was doing a pizza joint, they’d say, oh are you going to have pasta and this and that, and I’d say no I’m just doing pizza. And they’d walk in and say, what are you going to do with that wall? Nothing, it’s all finished!
People didn’t understand it until we opened. I remember the day we opened doors, or maybe a couple of days later, I had a couple guys pulled up on their Harleys. And they pull up front, and they can’t park in the street, and they can’t park on the sidewalk, so I said, I dunno just pull them in -- because we’ve got the garage door. I said just pull them in and park them right there. And as we’re sitting there, people would walk in and look at me, the same people who kinda didn’t understand, and they’d say, now we get it. That was the whole thing, it was supposed to be so relaxed, and so cool, not overdone.
I’ve got some walls with brick on them with the old stucco, and I remember sitting in there one night late at night and just starting to hammer away at the stucco and I’m going, this is cool! Whereas so many people go and take the brick, and paint stucco over it, and it’s like, you have to spend all this money to get a product that’s not the real deal anyway.
Greg: So it’s almost like you reverse engineered it. Instead of constructing it, you almost de-constructed it a little bit in some ways, to get to the thing.
Jon: Exactly, and that was the whole thing. I literally went in there and ripped the whole place out and started from the brick and from the concrete. And as you can see with URBN and with the other projects that I’m doing, I’ve followed the same…
Greg: Formula.
Jon: Ya, the same formula. It’s what I love. Ya know, I don’t like millwork and I don’t like -- it works, it works in a lot of places, but I love old […] beams and steel. Anything I can make out of steel, I’ll do anything to get a welder in my hand and start welding something together.
Greg: Very cool…
So you opened BASIC in 2006-2007, and now we’re into 2008 and you’re probably -- ya know, this business is just booming. What’s changed between when you opened in 2006 and where that neighborhood is today, what’s different in your business?
Jon: It’s definitely built up. It’s a real neighborhood now.
Greg: Right, and you’ve got a lot of residential.
Jon: A lot of residential. But you even have a lot of bars that are moving in.
Greg: Which is good. I think that sometimes people other places get a little distracted by competition being a bad thing. And I for one look at it as a good thing, because you’re creating more synergy and more -- what’s the word I’m trying to think of -- just connection, a place to go.
Jon: I tell people the same thing. It’s not competition, it’s just going to bring more people to the area. People say, I’m going to go to the Gaslamp, or I’m going to go to Little Italy, and then they find a place when they get there. But when I opened up BASIC, people didn’t say we’re going to go to East Village. They had to say, we’re going to trek down to BASIC. So that’s definitely changed. There are a lot more places, which is nice...
But it’s really the residents. There’s just a ton of residents who live there, and a lot of these residents have become our locals.
Greg: Is it the East Village people, or is it all of downtown in your opinion?
Jon: Umm, it’s probably all downtown.
Greg: Probably like every restaurant, it’s like Friday and Saturday, people are coming from everywhere, but it’s really the Sunday through Thursday where you’ve got to depend upon those people that are right in your 'hood.
Jon: Absolutely. There’s definitely a core group that you will see in there three to four times a week. And it’s funny, even when these other places open up, you’ll walk into them at night, and you’ll see all your locals in there and they coming running up to you and say, I just wanted to try it out, I just wanted to try it out! [laughs] It’s like, I don’t blame you…
Greg: It’s all good.
Jon: Nobody wants to go sit in one place all night. But ya, I like the competition, I like more places open, the more the merrier.
Greg: So how did you end up here in North Park then?
Jon: After I opened up BASIC, I said, you know -- the pizza is a hit. Everyone likes the pizza. I love the pizza. My goal and my idea was to take the pizza and roll it out -- do a bunch of little pizza joints -- brick oven, coal fired, whatever it was. And so I grabbed a space up in Vista. I took a space up in Vista because it was cheaper rent, a big space.
Greg: I remember reading about it in the Business Journal.
Jon: Ya, and I knew -- I thought that I wanted to go north. I thought I’d get into Orange County and L.A., so Vista would be the place where I’d make my dough, I bring my cheese in. I bring in truckloads of cheese from the East Coast, I bring my coal out from the East Coast. So that would be my commissary, thinking it would be right in the middle.
So I opened that up, and I met with the city, and they told me there was going to be a mix-use residential across the street, a new parking lot over here, this, that, and then the economy hit, and nothing happened.
Greg: So was that around 2008?
Jon: That was around 2008, October – November 2008. And so I opened up the doors and thought, what am I doing? Why did I do this? And so it really survived over time as the commissary for BASIC. And we did some business up there. But it jaded me a little bit on the small concept. I’m thinking BASIC did so well at 5,000 [square feet], and I open this… But really, it was unfortunately a little bit location, where it was, it was off the beaten path, and although that works downtown, it didn’t work up there.
And so I found this space [North Park URBN] and I looked at it and I knew -- at that point I still didn’t want to do something so big, but I walked in…
Greg: Is this space bigger than BASIC?
Jon: It’s the exact same size. The landlord who bought this space, bought it and redid the ceilings and put on these garage doors... I walked in and I said, this already looks -- this looks like BASIC. But I already had the concept rolling for URBN, so I decided to stick with URBN and do this as another coal fired pizza.
Greg: So how are they different? Is there a different experience I’m going to get down at BASIC versus being at URBN?
Jon: I think BASIC is more pizza and bar. And URBN is more craft pizza, craft drinks, craft cocktails, we have a little more of an extensive menu, with more salads on the menu, we do homemade meatballs, we do cheese plates. So it’s a little more food focused, more food oriented. I think that was better for North Park. I also wanted to give people something different here than they can get if they drive 10 minutes. But I know there are a lot of people in North Park that just don’t want to drive downtown, so I figured I would bring this to them, but I’d do it a little different.
It’s a big space. It’s great for the weekends. On a Monday, Tuesday, it’s -- it’s definitely not full, but for some reason, it’s just like BASIC where people are scattered, because I’ve got these banquets and I’ve got the big bar and then I’ve got some couches and sofas over here and I’ve got a 25 ft. communal table. Everybody likes what they like. It always feels comfortable. As much as it’s a hard line look, it’s still comfortable.
Greg: So I guess I’m hearing all these things about Gang Kitchen. It’s interesting because you’ve just had this high level of success in what you’re doing with pizza and beer and salad. I hear it’s going more of an Asian [concept] and it’s going down on Sixth Avenue?
Jon: Yes, multi-Asian, on 345 Sixth Avenue. It’s funny, everyone kinda asks me the same question -- why are you getting away from pizza? And I tell them the same thing, I’m kinda going back to my roots. And they look at me like, I figured you grew up in the pizza business. No -- I was in the restaurant business, but I did a lot of different stuff. The Asian concept is something that I’ve done the most. Under the umbrella we had about four or five Asian concepts, and a lot of them are similar to what I’m going to be doing, so I’ve had a lot of experience, and I really am going back to my roots.
A good friend of mine, who is a chef, and a chef who I’ve worked with for a number of years -- we worked together in Aspen, we worked together in Connecticut, in Miami, and I’m moving her out here. She’s coming out here. So I’ve got all the pieces.
Greg: Real quick, what is the origin of the name?
Jon: Ya, I want people to kinda say, what is Gang? It’s kinda what everyone does. Why Gang? Well gang in Mandarin [Chinese] means steel.
Greg: Steel, as in…? [knocks on table]
Jon: Ya, steel as in black steel.
Greg: Not like you just stole someone’s wallet?
Jon: Ya that’d be a little hard -- [laughs] -- to call it Gang and it’s about stealing things…
Greg: No I just wanted to make sure. [laughs]
Jon: Ya, it really works out well. One of my favorite things to design with is steel. So I found that. I’m always partial to the quick names -- BASIC, URBN, Gang…
Greg: Is it more Chinese or more Asian in general? What are the price points you’re looking at?
Jon: It’s definitely more Asian -- Asian fusion. It’s a French cooking style with healthy, healthy Asian ingredients. The one thing we’re going to stay away from is sushi. I think there’s some great sushi in town and there’s no sense…
Greg: Going in that direction.
Jon: No sense going in that direction. I wouldn’t want to open up a place if I thought the sushi somewhere else I liked better. I’m going to stay away from sushi, but it’s going to really incorporate a lot of different origins.
Greg: What are the price points going to be?
Jon: Well it’ll definitely be family style, just like if you ordered Chinese food out. So it’s going to range, everywhere from $8 up to -- I’m probably going to have a Shanghai Lobster on the menu that will be in the $30 - $35 range. But what you do is, if you have four people, you go in and order two appetizers and three entrees. So it’ll equal itself out. But it’s definitely moving a little more into the fine dining, with a casual atmosphere, just like I’ve done here. Not as casual…
Greg: A little more refined?
Jon: A little more refined.
Greg: And you’re working with Graham Downes on that project?
Jon: I’m working with Graham Downes again.
Greg: Has Graham done all your other projects?
Jon: Umm, Graham did BASIC and then when I did North Park, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, so I just had someone just draft up my plans.
Greg: What’s going to be the look and feel of this space that you’re working on with Graham, and how involved are you in the design with him?
Jon: Very. I’m tough at letting go. I know what I want, it’s in my head, and now I just have to get it to people to get it down.
Greg: I think entrepreneurs are all kind of that way…
So you’ve got this big overall concept, and it’s almost like he’s helping you put it into a funnel -- you’re directing the creative, but he’s funneling it and you guys are collaborating together on what you’re doing.
Jon: Ya, but at least I’ll have someone to sit down at a table with me and say, Jon, here’s eight chair samples, here’s eight banquet samples, here’s eight whatever samples. Pick one out -- do you like these? Instead of me sitting on the internet and…
Greg: Looking for all…
Jon: Trying to find things, because that takes forever. And Graham knows now, after doing BASIC, he knows what I like, he knows what kind of feel I want, so I think it will be a lot easier to work with him rather than going out and trying to find somebody else that doesn’t know my style.
Greg: And to me, being a real estate developer and doing some restaurants, to me the whole -- the process and the collaboration is a super enjoyable part of -- the whole reason why you do these things.
Jon: It is, it is.
Greg: Getting a chance to see how far you can push the edge of the envelope, with a cocktail or with a pizza or with a salad to get that guest’s reaction that you’re really striving for.
Jon: Oh ya, and the development of that is my favorite thing.
Greg: That’s killer.
Jon: I’m like -- as you said, entrepreneurs, we open something up and -- [laughs] -- we kinda get bored of it and want to move on and do something else. It’s sad but true. But I love the whole process, and as I move along I’m trying to -- you know, it’s funny, the best advice that I ever received in my life was from […] -- he’s my old boss but he’s also my mentor, he’s also a great friend -- and he said to me one day, he said, just enjoy the process.
Greg: That’s a very true statement.
Jon: And it goes with business, it goes with personal, it goes with everything.
Greg: Personal … it does.
Jon: And people ask me, what’s your best business advice, and I say, well my best life advice is…
Greg: Enjoy the process.
Jon: Enjoy the process. I don’t always follow it, I’ll be the first to admit it. My wife tries to put me back in my place when I don’t -- because it is hard, there’s stress and there’s problems, and every day there is something else, someone doesn’t show up, and today my ice machine is down. But you really just got to look back at it and enjoy the whole process because you get to the end -- and you know as well as I do -- that we’re like, okay it’s the end...
Greg: Great, I’m an operator…
Jon: Ya -- now what do I want to do? Now I want to do something else. So you really have to enjoy the process and be happy with it.
Greg: It’s true.
Jon: And then it kind of flows into -- you bring the energy into your space, and then you open up and it’s got great energy, and you hire employees and they get it, they feel it, they feed off you, and then we have places where people are happy…
Greg: It’s funny, I was talking with some people this weekend. There’s a guy named Ted Leonsis who’s from the East Coast who actually owns the Washington Capitals and the Wizards, and he sold his company when he was 27 or 28 years old for about $60 million, and he thought the whole definition of -- great I’ve made it, now I can enjoy life -- and what he really realized out of it was, it was the journey to get to the $60 million that was the happiness part of it for him, versus okay great I can move on.
Jon: Right, ya it’s the truth. I mean you can look back at -- it’s even like when you were a kid and you got in trouble when you were little, and it was like the end of the world, but then as you grew up you’re like, wow that really wasn’t that bad. And the same thing in business. I’ve made my mistakes and I’ve had my problems…
Greg: So if you had to pick something, that if someone were opening a restaurant, that you would say -- do this or don’t do that -- what would be the one do and one don’t?
Jon: You know, everybody always tells you -- location, location, location… But I think just to step back and really study it, research it, make sure you’re moving into the right place…
Greg: It’s the do.
Jon: It really is.
Greg: So let’s delve in, a little bit into your personal life. So I have a couple questions, but the first one -- where do you go when you’re not at your own establishments eating or having a drink or doing things?
Jon: Well I’ve got a wife of fifteen years and three children -- one’s eleven, one’s eight and one’s six. I’m at work a lot and so my wife has a full time job taking care of the kids. So any time, any chance I can get away and break away, I really am spending with my family. I work with a lot of friends of mine -- my managers, my partners are good friends of mine. So we try to get out and have some fun once in a while. But it always comes back to just hanging with the family.
Greg: Is it at home, or is there a particular restaurant the kids like to go to?
Jon: My kids, my kids love pizza. I don’t know why but they just, they love pizza. So if they don’t come here I have to bring it home to them a couple times a week. But they also love sushi. Even my six year old, he’s a sushi guy. You’ll find us a Sushi Ota, or some of the great sushi places in town.
Greg: Sushi Ota is great.
Jon: It is, it is. But really, just doing whatever I can to hang out with them and same thing, enjoy the process. It’s so easy to look at my wife and say, god I can’t wait until the kids are out of the house and we can have some fun again. But instead of that, why not look at it and say, let’s have some fun with the kids. So we try to -- we’re lucky where we live, in California, an hour trip and you’re anywhere you want to go -- some of the best mountains in the world. We love snowboarding, so that’s what we do all winter.
Greg: Hasn’t been a very good year for snowboarding this year has it…
Jon: No it hasn’t, but that’s okay because it lets me focus on work … [laughs]. And in the offseason you’ll find us -- we’ll be in the desert riding bikes or at the motor cross track. I ride with a good friend of mine who’s also my head pizza guy at URBN, and we go up to the track all the time and ride. So I just do anything I can to just get out and have fun and just look around and enjoy where we live -- enjoy the kids. Even if it’s bringing the kids to this practice, and that practice, these lessons and those lessons, I try to enjoy myself. I’m lucky enough to -- I live in La Jolla and I can see the water, so I try to walk down to the water every day with my dog and just realize how lucky I am and how happy I am.
Greg: That’s cool, really cool.
Jon: I don’t want to say, oh I made it, I want to say -- even this part is great.
Greg: So you’ve got a really great outlook on life. I mean, do you have a business hero and a personal hero?
Jon: You know, it’s funny, as I said my business mentor was also a good friend and my boss, and I saw the mistakes that he made and I learned from them. He’s a genius when it comes to restaurants. I’m just fortunate enough to work with him -- his name is Jody Pennette. He’s done some great, great restaurants around the country, so he’s definitely the person who has inspired me and who taught me everything that I know in this business and also gave me some of the best advice that I use in both my business and my personal life.
And then as kinda corny as it sounds, outside the restaurants but even helps me in business is my wife.
Greg: That’s cool.
Jon: My wife has done a lot to study and help -- I don’t know what you want to call it -- just to live a better life, live a happy life -- whether it’s spiritual, or for her it’s going to the gym or going to yoga or going to take a course, just about living life to your fullest. And I’m lucky enough because she spends a lot of time doing that and I reap a lot of the benefits…
Greg: The benefits from it. So it’s her support. That’s cool.
Jon: It is, and you gotta listen to your wife. So she’ll sit me down in front of the computer and say watch this video, watch this speaker, read this book. And I’m like oh come on honey I’m tired, I want to go to bed, I have to wake up early… Just read it, and I’ll read it, and it’s so amazing. She really is one of my teachers.
I’ve been married 15 years, and it wasn’t always -- it was a rocky road -- same thing, whether it’s business or personal, whatever is worth it, you’re going to hit speed bumps. I say it every day, even with the new project, I look around and say, everything is going too perfect, where are the speed bumps? Because that’s when I know that it’s real. And the same thing with my marriage and my family. I look back at it and say, I’ve been married for a good 15 years but they weren’t always good, we had some hard times.
Greg: But it gets back to that journey again…
Jon: Ya and we’re able to look back at those real hard times, when it seemed like it was the end of the world, and now we look back at them and laugh. We were this close to being separated, and we were actually separated for a short amount of time -- yet we were together every night even when we were separated -- but you look back at those things, and that’s what makes it real. It’s not a fairytale, it never is.
Greg: So it seems like one of your core values is your family. And it seems like you’re showing it off here with your tattoo. Can you kind of explain that a little bit?
Jon: Ya, my wife gave me a bracelet, and it was material, it wasn’t metal, and I wore it for a long time but it was like, I didn’t want to get rid of it. And I knew it was coming to an end, it was going to break any day. And so I wanted something that -- it was the one thing that I’d always looked down on when I was having a problem -- it just kinda picks you up. You think about your kids, and you think about your wife, and this is why I do it all. I do it for my kids. I do it for me, but I have a family, and I have a happy marriage, I love my wife. So I’d look down on it and think, what the hell am I going to do with this thing breaks? It’s going to ruin me! So I said I know what I’ll do, I’ll take it off myself and I’ll tattoo my wife’s name and my kids’ initials. And just every now and then I look at it and it just grounds me, it brings me back to earth...
Greg: That’s a good lesson for us all to learn.
Jon: Ya, it’s easy. When I look at my kids I’m like -- I love them and they love me. They love walking into my restaurants, they think it’s the coolest thing in the world… They’re the ones who push me. They push me and they pull me, and that’s life.
Greg: So what’s on the horizon after Gang Kitchen?
Jon: I don’t know if I want to think that far away. I think I really want to concentrate on the next one. But it’s like I said, as soon as I finish the next one I’m going to want to -- I’m going to figure something else out. But I’m real excited for the new project.
Greg: Good. Well I wish you all the very best in the coming year.
Jon: Thank you.
Greg: And I think you’ve done an outstanding job, not only with your design, your food, your drink and your service, but you know -- the community is lucky to have you.
Jon: Thank you, thank you -- I appreciate that.
Greg: Cheers.
Watch the new local celebrity interview video:
Behind the Scenes: Greg Strangman interviewed Jon Mangini at URBN Coal Fired Pizza in North Park on Tuesday, Jan. 31. Moderated by Michelle Guerin, video by Max Zien, photos by James Norton.
