Community: Back to brunch another day

With a slurp of hot mulled apple cider and a helping of fresh matzo balls, community is coming back to Morningside Heights—that is, Community Food & Juice, which will reopen this Wednesday following a fire last spring that plunged the organic restaurant into six months of reconstruction and lost business.

Community Food & Juice took over a prime retail slot on Broadway between 112th and 113th streets in the fall of 2007 and, according to proprietors, began to turn a profit a year and a half later. But the success was short-lived due to a kitchen fire in April that spread to the neighboring 600 W. 113th dormitory and displaced several residents.

Now, half a year later, after overcoming many logistical bumps and finishing minor interior remodeling, the owners of Community—DeDe Lahman and her husband Neil Kleinberg, the executive chef—are reopening the restaurant, which they say is the same as the pre-fire joint, only better.

“We can’t wait—we are so excited,” Lahman said. “We hope that people will come running.”

Lahman said she and Kleinberg took the shutdown as an opportunity to remodel the kitchen so the entire operation would be more efficient, while also replacing the juice bar with 18 new seats, which she predicted would reduce the long lines that often develop on weekends.

William Kooper, the chef de cuisine, said he was excited to finish the messy process of reconstruction and return to the kitchen.

“I’d much rather be in the kitchen than dealing with construction, plumbers, Con Ed, electricians,” Kooper said, adding that he was especially excited about a new duck entrée and other seasonal favorites for the fall menu.

But Kleinberg said the six months of delays were not without serious struggle and frustration.

“This is a long time coming,” he said. “There are so many things you have no control of, and that’s the stuff that kills you sometimes.” In the meantime, he has kept busy at Clinton Street Baking Co., the downtown business he and his wife opened in 2001.

While both he and Lahman expressed confidence moving forward, Kleinberg said it was difficult to ignore the struggles of the restaurant industry at large, adding that six months of lost revenue for a relatively new business is never good news.

“If you own 10, and one goes down, you can absorb it. If you own five, and you lose one, you deal with it,” he said. “But if you own two, it is a struggle.”

“Small business owners rely on the income of the business to provide them with their lifestyles,” Kleinberg continued, adding that he has tried to devote his attention to the downtown joint while struggling with the bureaucratic process of reopening Community.

Though Community has been very successful financially, Kleinberg said, the reality for new restaurants is, “You don’t make money overnight.”

Returning managers and chefs agreed that, based on neighborhood feedback, many locals have been more than a little anxious to see the brown paper taken down from Community’s windows and the doors reopened to hungry patrons seeking a healthy brunch.

“We’re picking up where we left off,” said manager Liz Huber, who said management is in the process of rehiring 90 percent of the restaurant’s former staff. “There have definitely been some rough patches, but we are looking ahead.”

Lahman agreed, reflecting on the repairs, delays, and lost revenue by saying, “We can’t really dwell on it. We gotta move on, get people in, and get people eating.”