I Think I am Sitting on the Wrong Side of the Table
by Diane Nicolia

The decision to start a business is never an easy one; that’s fairly obvious. But starting a business that you know nothing about is purely sadistic. And that, my friends, is where
I am at. But the story of how The Gatsby Restaurant began is worth at least a few laughs.
When a “friend” (quotation marks should be allowed to speak for themselves, huh?) told us of a beaten up, overgrown but
beautiful castle-like building in Islip, I couldn’t begin to imagine the state of the old Czech Castle Inn, later known as the restaurant, “Tangs”. As we walked through this former estate, I was certain that my “partner* was out of his mind and his league. But he really needed investors for his venture so we, along with Steve and Laurie, decided to give it a go. Whereas Steve and I were supposed to be silent partners, I soon realized that silence is not golden.
The Gatsby Mansion is comprised of three gorgeous floors of unbelievable architecture dating back to approximately 1870. One can only imagine the hidden treasures found in the basement and attic of our new/old jewel. We found liquor bottles from the early 1900s, newspapers stuffed in floors and walls from even earlier, and a strange, cage-like room in
the basement, which we believed to be the cold box, or refrigerator.
The first discovery that we made when we walked through the building was an Oriental Pagoda-like statue that was about two feet wide and was barely hanging off the wall in the kitchen. As we started to empty the building, our first inclination was
to remove it along with everything else that was left behind. But it seemed that everyone was afraid to touch it, no less remove it for fear of some ancient curse of bad luck or torture that would be brought down upon us.
So, for 12 months we restored our beauty under the watchful eye of a rather chubby guardian with a dragon wrapped around him and fried rice stuck to his body.
After we realized that we were not going to be able to just spruce up the building, as originally planned and budgeted, we decided to go in a whole new direction and repair and restore instead. Ripping down wallpaper alone exposed two fabulous fireplaces. Opening a boarded up door led us into a quaint little round room on the top of the prominently displayed turret that makes up the front of the mansion. And cleaning away years of dirt, grease and grime exposed the original rope ceiling and wood-coffered ceiling that once shone upon the mansion’s dining room. Imagine cleaning out old tables and chairs from the basement and moving what you thought was a wall only to find out that it was a set of original 10 foot doors that once graced the grand entrance to this lovely South Shore Estate!

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After almost one year of work, in October 2003, The Gatsby was ready for its debut. Well, at least that’s what we thought. Steve and I assumed that if we had a kitchen, food, liquor, and a “staff” we were good to go. We were certain that the decor was to be a “hit” and it was.
But reality smacked us in the face on the first night when our friends and family came in for a practice dinner. The calamari took two hours, the dessert came before the entree, and the guests got drunk from the lack of food and the abundance of fine wines. And I must say, that was one of the better nights. It was obvious that we were in way over our heads and could no longer remain silent. If we were going to make it through Christmas, we knew it was time to LEARN, and learn fast.
Four months later, we embarked on a journey that would have brought many to tears (and I know this from experience).
It seemed that there was no other way but to start over. So that’s exactly what we did. By April of 2004, The Gatsby was owned by just Steve and I, the two people who knew more about going to restaurants than running one. We re-did what we had
re-done, we cajoled and promised and any and everything in between. We laughed, we cried (well, I did anyway), but
amazingly, we never fought. There became this understanding that no matter what happened, we would not sink. And between us and our spouses, Roberto and Laurie, and some very loyal
employees, friends and customers, our not so wonderful beginning proved to be just what we needed to get us going. What we learned was that a forced education is often the best one.
So many people have helped us to get The Gatsby where it is. Our staff is incredible; our patrons are wonderful. Our purveyors offer sound advice. We have a great friend that comes in every holiday and decorates The Gatsby with the most incredible displays of flowers. She enlists the help of everyone around her and transforms the entire mansion into a winter wonderland in December and a floral garden in the Spring. These are the people that keep you going.
And it would not be polite to forget about our residents at The Gatsby, the ghosts. Now, that may sound a bit odd, especially from someone who has never had the pleasure of encountering a ghost, but believe me, it can be a nuisance.
One cannot imagine the noise that our “old friends” can make. They slam doors, run across wood floors, lock doors and blow wind in your face. I don’t think that they mean to be such menaces; we did invade their home after all. Several people that have come into the restaurant and have claimed to be aware of these things, delight us with details that Steve and I cannot see. They say that The Gatsby is very much alive with happy spirits and that they felt the second floor was abuzz with many happy dancing patrons in very old style clothing. Whereas that has great appeal to some people, I can assure you that I close my eyes every time that I have to pass through the second floor to go to the third floor.
Thankfully, neither Steve nor I have ever been graced with any ghostly visitors. Perhaps they know we have our hands full, or maybe they are just there to watch over us as we plod our way through this business. Whatever the reason, they are very much a part of the rich history of The Gatsby mansion (and I hope they
stay invisible).
Maybe the past two years have been a way for us to look at life through the eyes of someone else (someone insane, I’m sure). Never before have I experienced the myriad of personalities and situations that one comes across while running a restaurant. I’ve never noticed the small things like the way the napkins are folded or how the wine is poured. But now, I notice; I see; I compare. There have been times when I was so frustrated with the whole restaurant business that I wanted to run away from it and hide in a closet. Sometimes the four of us will sit out on
the deck and reminisce about our lives before we owned The Gatsby. We always end up asking each other the same
question: “How the heck did we end up doing this?” Then we invariably laugh because we know the joke is not on us---
it’s on our kids because one day this will all be theirs! And they say parents can’t get even!

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