TEX-MEX EXEC

D Magazine, Jan 01, 2001 by Bowden, Jeff

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,"