TEX-MEX EXEC

MICO RODRIGUEZ, THE INSPIRATION AND SOUL BEHIND MI COCINA, was born with a restaurant running in his head. Mico arguably holds the hottest hand in Dallas dining today. He and his M Crowd partners are only months away from opening two new Uptown restaurants, Paris Vendome, a French brasserie, and Barumba, a subterranean Latin lounge. Paris Vendome and Barumba will join a restaurant group that includes Taco Diner, The Mercury, Citizen, Mainstream Fish House, Ellington's Chop House in Fort Worth, and nine Mi Cocinas.

When Mico and I meet at Mi Cocina in the Highland Park Village, the first stop of a half-day together, the restaurant is largely empty, lunch still three

hours away. The place is sleek and hip-no pinatas, bullfighting posters, or velvet paintings of senoritas. A four-paneled painting by Mexican artist Luis Sotill hangs on one wall, reflecting the four seasons of Mexico. Next to it hangs a Daniel Bayless portrait of Mico's grandmother.

Mico is large and welcoming. He is dressed in black warmups and running shoes. Monday is personal trainer day. "I still get goosebumps every time I come in here," Mico says, releasing my hand. He should. Thirty years ago. his grandfather was a grillman in this very same location, in a steakhouse named Sammy's. It's Mico's now.

The staff senses that the boss is in the house. As Mico points out various elements of the recent redesign, a collaboration with architectural partner ZERO 3, the busboys keep their heads down and wipe tables and stack glasses. Suddenly, Mice, directs my attention to the woman singing in Spanish over the sound system.

"What's she saying?" I ask.

"Cry for what you didn't do," he says. "Cry for what you weren't."

Mico Rodriguez has no such song to sing: He's living his dream.

He wasn't thinking that he was going to sit at the head of a $45 million restaurant group when he opened the first Mi Cocina in June 1991. He simply wanted to buy a house for his wife. Mico has spent his entire life in restaurants. When he was 6, he was the waterboy at an El Chico on Mockingbird managed by his mother and stepfather. He followed his mother when she opened Mia's on Lemmon Avenue, where he excelled at seating unlikely combinations of single guests. The pairings, in effect blind dates over chips and hot sauce, often resulted in friendships and always resulted in a full house. By the fall of 1989, however, Mico Rodriguez was itching to go out on his own, to start his own band, as he describes it. He called Ray Washburne.

Washburne was a longtime customer of Mia's. He likens it to the PBS program Fawlty Towers. "Half the fun of going was to watch the family hug, cry, love, and yell," Washburne says. Nevertheless, to him, Mico's call was out of context. "Although we were friendly with each other," Washburne remembers, "I knew him only from Mia's." The men agreed to meet at a Chinese place near Stemmons.

"There was no business plan," Washburne says. "Mico just wanted to start a restaurant in North Dallas. He said he could do it for $25,000." On the spot, Washburne agreed to put up the money and scout locations. He went looking for locations that might become neighborhood hangouts. Twice, the money ran out and the locations fell through. Washburne and Mico eventually landed at Preston and Forest with two additional partners: Washburne's brother, Dick, and Collin Street Bakery president and Corsicana businessman, Bob McNutt. The group's total investment amounted to $82,500, including a last-minute loan to purchase food for opening night.

Mico hoped to pay back his investors in five or 10 years. Working 14 hours a day, seven days a week-him in back, wife Caroline up front-Mico paid back his investors in five months.

WHATEVER GOOSEBUMPS AROSE ON MICO'S FOREARMS THIS morning recede as we make our way to the kitchen. The stairs leading to the loft aren't clean enough. A strip of rubberized flooring is peeling up near the ice machine. A service bar needs refitting. Later Mico will complain that the upstairs tables, the ones along the railing, are out of position. A salt shaker knocked from any of them would fall to the first floor. In a sense, he and I are looking at two different scenes: Where I see a banquette, he sees the stitching,

A discrete camera mounted in the comer of the kitchen focuses on the stainless steel prep area. I ask about it. "Everyone's happy when I show up," Mico explains. "I want to know what it's like when I'm not here. I'm looking for a heightened awareness."

Mico will tell you that the restaurant business is mostly about managing behaviors. He praises, scolds, promotes, and fires. He dispenses cash and hands out Christmas presents. Like the Cuellar brothers, the founders of El Chico, Mico steps in when employees need help. When he's in his Tony Soprano mode, he parks near the dumpsters, All sorts of things go wrong at the back of a restaurant, but perhaps the most egregious to Mico is paying for poor quality produce. He's notoriously tough on the purveyors who supply his restaurants. "It's easy to be his friend," one local businessman told me. "Just don't bring him any bruised lemons,"

Juanita Miller is almost single-handedly responsible for Mico being in the Highland Park Village and, as a result, for much of what has followed. When she and her husband, Henry S. Miller, and their son, Henry 111, went looking for a restaurant to replace Los Vaqueros in 1992, they ate at every prospective Mexican food place in town. **We visited some several times," she tells me in a phone call from Paris, where she and her husband have an apartment. "At Mico's there were always families eating together, just like what we had at the Village," she says.

Her husband and son were less certain about putting Mi Cocina in such a prominent space. At the time, Mico commanded a restaurant that had only 12 tables and operated out of a nearly deserted strip center. But Juanita insisted. "Mico's was pleasant and clean," she remembers. "The food was good and we knew Mico's background."

Near the end of our conversation, Juanita paused and cupped the receiver, "Henry," she said to her husband, who I could hear in the background, "what else did I say?"

"Oh, yeah," she says, returning to me. "I liked the idea of Mico wanting to be the best."

BEFORE WE LEAVE MI COCINA TO HEAD TOWARD DOWNTOWN, Mico breaks away to chat with a man peeling potatoes. Mico calls him by name. The men speak for a minute or two. exchanging pleasantries. As we turn to leave, I ask about the potato peeler. "He's been with me for five years," Mico says.

Operating in an industry known for heavy turnover and in an era in which every restaurant has an "accepting applications" banner out front, Mico enjoys a buyer's market for employees. Those who meet his demands find a home and a career. Busboys become waiters, waiters become general managers, and general managers end up in the executive office. It's possible to become a partner.

When Gene Street talks about Mico, his praise sounds like golf pros acknowledging Tiger Woods-a stream of superlatives that include, embedded within, a hope that he'll take up another game. Street knows a thing or two about restaurants. He and Phil Cobb started the BlackEyed Pea chain. Street and his partners went on to build a $280 million restaurant conglomerate that includes Good Eats, Spaghetti Warehouse, Cool River, and III Forks. Street also owns El Chico.

"I ate at Mi Cocina just last night," Street told me a week or so after my day with Mico. "Great meal. In 12 minutes, I had my tea sweetened, my food served, and a check. Every restaurant manager who goes into one of their places says to himself, 'This is what I want to be."' Street's not the only person in his family to sneak over to Mi Cocina. "What really gets me," he laughs, "is that my wife, Lisa, likes Mi Cocina better than my Mexican restaurants." Street also owns Casa Rosa and Cantina Laredo, "She'll say that she goes to Mi Cocina because her friends go there, but I see her credit card bills."

"Listen," he continues, "Mico has almost a vengeance for success. He's a very fierce competitor. He's probably tough to work for, but I'll tell you this: We love to hire people from Mi Cocina. They come with a quality glean. Mi Cocina is the benchmark in Dallas."

RIDING SHOTGUN WITH MICO REQUIRES BOTH HANDS. WRITING is almost impossible. Between the Village Mi Cocina and the Katy Trestle, I manage to jot down "story line" and "executive producer." All day long I hear them. "Story line" refers to the new restaurants that Mico and his partners are developing, and "executive producer" refers to him. Sometimes the words seem new and stiff, as though they were part of a Hollywood vocabulary -building exercise. Most of the time they sound as though they are for Mico's benefit, not mine. Perhaps by speaking of his restaurants in show business terms, Mico reinforces the length of his remarkable journey.

"When we started Mi Cocina. I hadn't been anywhere," he tells me. "Not even Mexico." By the time the Highland Park Village restaurant was up and running, Mico started looking around. A trip to Mexico City introduced him to taquerias, Pond of the Frog in particular. Before long he packed up his partners and flew down for a closer inspection. The result was Taco Diner in Preston Center. Trips to New York., Europe, and Asia led Mico and his partners to create a fine dining division with executive chef Chris Ward. Together, Mico and Ward created The Mercury and Citizen. As Mico's circle of experience has widened, his passion for and knowledge of food has deepened.

THE OFFICES OF MI COCINA AND THE OTHER "STORY LINES" WILL soon move to the West Village in Uptown, above Paris Vendome. The present offices, located on Cedar Springs, are decorated with a combination of leftover office furniture and expensive Aeron desk chairs. In the conference room, a longish table is pushed to one end, pinning chairs along a wall. The real action takes place at a smaller table near a bookcase. The bookcase is filled with glasses, plates, and bowls, the way other businesses display auto parts or stock offerings encased in Lucite. Many of the glasses and plates have Post-It Notes attached. A note on a glass asks, "tea or water?"

One by one, the M Crowd operations team members file in for their Monday meeting with Mico. The issues are conceptual and practical: The team reviews architectural plans for a new restaurant in Fort Worth, discusses computer glitches and proprietary margarita mixes, and plans the switching of fryers at two Mi Cocina locations. Much of the talk centers on food purveyors, although it is cryptic and impossible for me to understand. This is a business, evidently, of broad themes and neverending details. Not all of the details are chores, however. Today is Land Rover trade-in day for the executive staff. The new company car is a Lexus SUV. Take care of Mico and Mico takes care of you. As the team files out, they go with Mico's standing order, "Find me better beans, better cheese, better meat."

When they are gone he turns to me. "We're old-fashioned here," he says. "We're trying to build neighborhood hangouts. We don't talk about units or table counts. We talk about people, value, and character."

TECH INVESTORS LIKE TO TALK ABOUT SCALABILITY-THE RELAtive ease with which a company can grow. Mico's empire is scaleable in the most fundamental aspect: It grows little Micos. Mico sends me to lunch at Taco Diner with the company's vice president of operations, David Navarrete, to get a firsthand look.

Navarrete has worked at various restaurants for 27 years. He owned Cafe 450 on Lower Greenville until he gave it up to work with Mico. By noon, the Preston Center Taco Diner is packed. Navarrete explains Mi Cocina's philosophy of growing employees and the business over poblano soup and chicken tacos. It turns out that the idea originally comes from the Cuellar brothers. "See those three tables," Navarrete says, motioning over my shoulder. "We tell our waiters. 'You're a businessman now. Those three tables are your restaurant. Give it the personal touch that you would give in your home."'

The employees that are energized by running their own show stay on, Ramon Cruz has. Cruz is general manager of Taco Diner. He's followed Mico from Mia's to the Lakewood Mi Cocina to Taco Diner. Cruz has taken the next step with the company by becoming an equity partner. There is no video camera more powerful than an owner on premises.

By the time I get back to the M Crowd's offices, the partners are all crowded around Mico to pore over plans for a new restaurant. Mico is rushing to tie up loose ends so he can leave on an 18-day trip to Paris to shop flea markets for Paris Vendome. He'll eat, too. On a typical overseas trip, Mico eats at 20 to 50 different places. Perhaps he'll discover something in the City of Lights that will work back home. If he does, another generation of Micos will start their own businesses with him. Three tables at a time.

Copyright D Magazine Jan 01, 2001
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