For the first time in the 12 years since Peter Zappa took over ownership, Gloucester's Causeway Restaurant has had cause to close for a day — or two.
The cause, says Zappa, was his wife, Enza.
"She's the brains behind the operation," he laughs, "She'll say 'you should do this and you should do that,' and we do it and it works. So when she said the place needed to close down and renovate, we closed down and renovated, and people seem to like the results."
Actually, people seem to think that the Causeway did a lot more than renovate during the week it was closed.
From Jan. 1 to 6, the Essex Avenue landmark eatery was a work site, abuzz with the sounds of buzz saws. And when it reopened, word went out that the place had expanded.
"We hadn't," says Zappa, "but I guess that's the impression."
Maybe it was also wishful thinking.
As far as most of its legions of satisfied customers are concerned, the only thing wrong with the Causeway Restaurant is that there's just not enough of it.
In season, they wait out in the parking lot, sometimes for up to two hours, and even in the dead of winter, an hour or more at lunch. The place seats 50 people, but manages to feed an average of 500 diners a day through the summer months.
"We'll turn around 10 seatings daily," says Zappa, "200 hundred for lunch alone."
That head count, he adds, is up from the seven lunch customers a day the restaurant was averaging when he took it over in 2000 — that was in August at peak season.
"Back then," says Zappa, former owner Vincent Rodolosi had been closing the kitchen 3 to 5 p.m. every day, then reopening for dinner.
For Zappa, who'd grown up in some ways at the Gloucester House — starting at the age of 13 as a dish washer, and, over the course of 17 years, rising through the ranks to running the whole kitchen — the words "down time" do not exist.
With the exception of this January's time-out for renovations, the Causeway is open seven days a week, 11 a.m, to 11 p.m., "unless you count Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving and Easter."
That's something Zappa has no plans of changing.
"Expansion is definitely something we definitely would like plan on," says Zappa. "but for now, we've just opened up the space, lightened and brightened the place. It gives the impression that it's bigger, but it's not."
Zappa estimated the renovation cost around $5,000, with new lighting and the removal of a wall that largely divided the dining room the most notable changes.
Today's Causeway, he said, is a lot more costly to run. Over the past two years, inflation has doubled the cost of food at wholesale level, just as it has in the supermarkets.
"I look at my customers," he says, "and 90 percent of them are working class to middle class and they're struggling. In this recession, we've all been struggling."
Two years ago, he says, scallops were $5 to $6 a pound. Today, they're $12 a pound.
"And that sort of inflation is pretty much across the board with all seafood," Zappa says.
Haddock is by far the biggest seafood staple on the Causeway's menu. The restaurant cooks up 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of it annually — serving it fried, baked, casseroled and famously chowdered.
"Our fish chowder is a big crowd-pleaser," says Zappa. "And what people like about it is that there's fish in it. A lot of it."
"All our portions are big," says Zappa, "we're a family restaurant. We put the food on the table and let the people eat like they do at home.
"People can share, entrees can be big enough for two, so people might share one between two," he says. "What we lose on one sharing, we'll make up on another splurging. It all evens out."
This philosophy has been especially popular throughout the continued economic downturn.
Zappa says the value of maximizing portion sizes and minimizing menu prices has kept the house packed in the years since the country's 2008 economic downturn.
As to expansion, however, customers will still have to wait, as they have for 12 years in the parking lot.
That way, says Zappa, the little restaurant that can will keep on serving those huge portions to those who are willing to wait.
Joann Mackenzie can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3457, or jomackenzie@gloucestertimes.com.
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