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Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Fire at Restaurant Jezebel: Update
Restaurant Jezebel’s chef and owner, Parind Vora, says the fire that put him out of business Monday morning won’t be the fire that puts him out of business for good.
Maybe for a few months, but not permanently, especially when so much of his life is tied up in the building at 914 Congress Ave. “This is an extension of me. This is what I love to do,” Vora said on Tuesday.
Early indications are that the fire might have been electrical. The city has released the site back to Vora, and now the adjusters will work out the details, the causes, the finances for making things right.
So what’s next? Vora also has the wine bar, Simplicity (4801 Burnet Road, 419-0200, www.simplicitywinebar.com), and a new mid-priced bistro called Braise (2121 E. Sixth St., 478-8700, www.braiseaustin.com). He’s finding work there for as much of his staff as he can.
From the optimism that might have been drawn from early Austin Fire Department reports of a small fire, the scene is surprising in its barren blackness, the smell a whirled incense of ash and dry aromatic spice, water dripping from wrecked conduits like movie scenes from a dragon’s cave.
Jezebel’s jezebels are gone, the gallery of nudes by Tom Darrah fallen from the peeling plaster walls, one canvas lying like the Shroud of Turin across the front entry, the features of a woman barely traceable through the soot.
And the wine. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of rare and collectible bottles, cult and quirky rarities, some listing for $1,000 a bottle on a wine list that had great values in the $30s and magnificent finds in the $40s and beyond. All of it’s gone, the bottles as blackened and ashenly quiet as a scene from Pompeii.
In the big scheme of things, it was a small fire, one that flashed into a fireball then died quickly after it ate all the fuel in the front room, died gasping for oxygen in the tight confines of the antique stone building.
The fire didn’t bring down the building or cause injuries, but the restaurant space is in ruins, with chairs and tables frozen in stages of twisted ember and Dali-esque melted cascades. The new blinds are cosine heat waves across the front windows. The light fixtures hang like stalactites from a ruined future.
Vora said it’s a stroke of luck that the front windows didn’t blow out. The draft might have fed a blaze capable of consuming the building, spreading to Little City next door and beyond.
Credit the Fire Department for keeping the damage contained to Jezebel, where it spared the kitchen and back spaces. But fine ash has layered everything in soft focus. All the stock will have to be thrown away. Everything in the coolers, the freezers, all the spices and sauce bottles, the cheeses gone to waste.
For now, Vora said he has to figure out how much has been lost before he can figure out what needs to be rebuilt. Already, he’s talking about what he can do better when Jezebel comes back. The sari cloth he uses under the white linens was untouched by the fire. It’s ready when he is.
(American-Statesman photos)
