Local customers are 'irreplaceable': Why one sodden Auckland restaurant will be back
Friday, 3 February 2023
In the coming weeks, central Auckland restaurateur David Meagher will be gutting his much-loved Italian eatery from top to bottom.
All the furniture has got to go, and the walls will need stripping so the wooden framing can dry – or even be replaced.
No plate, pot or spoon can be kept in case of contamination, and there’s no chance any of the sealed food stock can be held for later either.
But despite the weeks of work and thousands of dollars ahead of him, Meagher says Sal Rose Italian Restaurant isn’t going anywhere.
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“I’m blowing my own trumpet, but Sal Rose is an iconic part – an integral part – of the Mt Albert community,” Meagher said. After all, it’s been on site for 18 years.
“We’ve got generations of people coming in here, we’ve got a major following. So you can’t take that away and relocate. We’ve got all that good will, and that good will is irreplaceable, that’s the main thing.”
Besides, he added – the red tape of getting into a new site is a “nightmare”.
Sal Rose was inundated with water during the immense rainfall on January 27, which has now been recognised as the wettest day of the wettest month in history.
Like many others, it was flooded with metres of rain and floodwater. The recovery work had barely begun when more rain came, and more still is expected before long.
Meagher has been working fairly non-stop with a builder friend of his to get the site ready to rebuild. But the rain has stopped them from filling a skip – the biggest he could find – with the waste.
“If it doesn’t stop, well, we’ll start,” he laughed. “We’re just going to strip everything down to a bare shell and rebuild.”
He said he’s trying not to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the job ahead of him by taking everything one job at a time. But it will take at least a few months to get the doors reopened, he thinks.
“Even now it’s looking better. I’ve ripped all the booths out, I’ve ripped up the carpet from downstairs.”
Since the floods, people keep stopping to tell them how excited they are to see him reopen, and that they plan to be first through the door when he does.
“Even today, I am outside doing something, customers are walking past or stop in their cars and say, ‘David, we’re so sorry, is there anything we can do? We want to make sure you’re going to carry on.’”
Meagher said he's lucky to have insurance, as well as loss of income cover so he can keep his staff paid, and ensure he has a team for when the doors reopen.
Meanwhile, a family-owned dance studio in Brown’s Bay has no insurance to help rebuild after water reached waist-deep levels in Friday’s floods.
Anna Ellis, who is the third generation of her family to own Bays School of Dance, said by the time she got to her studio, it was too late to do anything.
“Everything was floating. The force of the water managed to physically buckle the garage door, so it flooded through there too.
“All our stereos were waterlogged so we have lost all of them, we ended up losing a lot of uniforms and smaller items.”
There is also water in the walls and the concrete, seeping into the floors, Ellis said.
Having made it through Covid-19 lockdowns, Ellis thought 2023 was going to be a year of recovery, but instead she is facing an expensive rebuild, including rebuilding the floors and replacing high-tech equipment.
But with a strong community around her of past dancers and teachers, she expects she’ll get through.
People came to help until 2am, Ellis said.
And in response to a Givealittle fundraiser, more than 80 people have raised over $6000 in just five days.