Wednesday morning, just before 9 a.m.
Clouds block the sun; it’s gray and quiet downtown Mancos. Snow flurries fall slowly, delicately dancing through the thin air.
People are rising like the snowfall: slowly.
Some stumble into the new Moondog Café & Bakery on South Main Street, which is alive, awake and warm, having opened at 7:30 a.m.
Staff welcome those coming in for breakfast or taking their morning coffee to go; they’re especially rested after their day off yesterday, as Moondog is closed on Tuesdays.
“Michelle” by the Beatles is playing, a welcome background noise filling lulls in conversation, and broken by sounds from the kitchen – which is open to the restaurant – and the grinding of coffee beans.
It’s housed in the historic Bauer bank building, which, built in 1905, is “the oldest surviving commercial masonry building in the Mancos Valley,” according to History Colorado.
For the past 16 years, the building was Absolute Bakery and Café, something Sasha Cucci, who owns Moondog with his family, called a “mainstay.”
“ABC was very much the hub of town, kind of one of the main arteries where everyone did everything,” said Sasha. “It was a meeting place all the tourists would come through.”
He said that recently, a few fans of Absolute Bakery were in Grand Junction and heard about Moondog opening, so they drove four hours try it out.
“It was so cool and flattering,” Sasha said.
“People seem to appreciate it, even though it’s a little different from what’s been here years prior,” he said.
On Dec. 19, Absolute owners David and Karen Blaine posted a letter on its Facebook saying that “grandkids, trails, slopes, books and travels are calling. It’s time to move on.”
And so they sold it to “experienced restaurateurs” who “are going to remodel the bakery to improve its serviceability and kitchen operations.”
Sasha said the sale was “serendipitous” and also done quietly.
He said after he moved to town, his mother, Jamille and her partner, Dominique Falkner, soon followed.
He had lived in Hesperus and the Durango area, and came to Mancos for firewood in the fall.
“Every time I drove from Durango over here, it was just this epic landscape. It was bigger, it was more moisture, all the trees were more wild,” said Sasha. “I remember always romanticizing being in the mountains here.”
On top of that, restaurants have been in their family for four generations.
“I’ll be the fourth,” Sasha said.
Jamille and Dominque each owned café’s separately, for 25 and 30 years, respectively. After some time, the pair got together and opened the first – and only other – location of Moondog Café & Bakery in Key West, Florida.
So when David Blaine, who owned Absolute Bakery with his wife, heard the restaurant family had moved to town, he was interested in meeting them. He didn’t want it to go to anyone who would “mess it up,” Sasha said.
“It was just too good to pass up,” said Sasha. “Especially being in the area on and off for so long, coming to ABC as a tourist … and loving the place for all the Colorado quirk that it had, so it was just like, how could this actually be available.”
And so last spring, they officially purchased the bakery, but Absolute stayed open until Jan. 1, 2024 because Sasha and his family weren’t quite ready to take it over just yet, he said.
“A restaurant was the last thing we were thinking of opening,” Jamille said.
In fact, Sasha said she had asked him never to get into the industry.
“My mother my whole life had never wanted me to work in a restaurant,” said Sasha. “She said go do something else, so I went to college, I had all these other dreams and aspirations.”
“It was definitely a reckoning, a growing point” to do something his family’s done for generations before him.
“The industry is different today than what it was for me growing up,” said Jamille. “And you don’t have to fit into a mold. You can create what kind of environment you want for you and your team.”
“Renting it out wouldn’t pay homage to the community. ABC was a big hub; we wanted to pay tribute to the town and the space and do something to create jobs,” Jamille said.
So they decided to open Moondog Café & Bakery,
Admittedly, they were overly ambitious with how simple they could make the project, Sasha said.
“We got in here, we started doing some cleaning, and then all of a sudden we were down to the joists, walls removed – just one of those typical remodel stories,” Sasha said with a laugh.
It quickly turned into nine months of renovations.
It’s in part because the building is so old and an “icon of this town in a way.”
The family “really wanted to be careful about making it too new … (and) to instead highlight some of the attributes and the really pretty notes, cause it’s such a beautiful space,” Sasha said.
So in those nine months, they exposed more of the stone wall and created a storefront, opening its grand front windows to the kitchen and rest of the space.
They decided to keep the general format of the restaurant while bringing it up to date in the kitchen and with “contemporary decorations,” Sasha said.
A vibrant desert mural covers the better part of two walls and dark green tiles with large black and white polka dots line the entirety of the bar: It’s a whimsical, colorful, patterned place.
Much of the décor is repurposed things they found in the basement of the building.
“That was a deep dungeon of no cleaning for 140 years. We found so much cool stuff buried in there,” Sasha said.
On a main wall, directly across from the bar, there’s a big sign that reads “RESTAURANT,” which they found buried in the coal room from when it was a restaurant in ‘20s or ‘30s, Sasha said.
All the wood that went into building the shelving and server stations was also found in the basement, as is the ornate tin office door.
The post office boxes on the left when you walk in the door were there, too, from when it was a post office ages ago, Sasha said.
“Trying to keep as much of that stuff in the restaurant was really fun. It took some critical thinking to try and figure out how to incorporate it, but there was just so much beautiful stuff to keep around,” Sasha said.
“It was a cool dance to be done,” he said.
As far as the other location in Key West goes, Sasha said it’s the “same but different.”
“We tried to adapt the existing menu to the Southwest, using a little bit more Colorado ingredients, a bit more regional-type stuff, but still pretty plug and play for breakfast,” he said.
In the Keys, the menu is, of course, “really tropical.” There’s more seafood, tropical fruits and bright ingredients like pineapple and mango.
“Here, we definitely shifted away from the seafood to beef from a local ranch in Hesperus and iconic green chile stuff,” he said. “It’s an ode to the area, and we hope to keep adding some more regional stuff over time.”
In the future, they also intend to start serving dinner and stay open later than 3 p.m. In the spring, they’d like to offer riverfront dining, too, Jamille said.
But as they’ve opened, and as new people in town, the community has been “gentle as we get up and running,” Sasha said.
The community has been welcoming, too, Jamille said.
“The whole thing felt so silly: Everything from the build-out to my own personal relationship with doing a restaurant,” said Sasha.
“The coolest thing I think I’ve had happen is coming in after we opened one day a little late and seeing everyone here and not being on the other side working it. That’s when it was really real: It’s a functioning, breathing place with or without me.”
