Corridor Buzz - The Premier Source of Arts & Entertainment News and Information for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor

Mondanaro selects theme for former Tomato Pie

By Gigi Wood

It’s fusion with a slant.

Jim Mondanaro’s next big restaurant idea will be open for business this winter. The menu and theme will be what he refers to as “invasion fusion,” a mix between Vietnamese and California cuisine. The new concept will replace Mondo’s Tomato Pie on the Coralville strip, which was flooded in June. It is expected to be open by December.

“It’s important to me to give us healthy, to me this Asian food is healthy, yet it’s comfort food. It’s unique, yet its price point, I believe, is comfortable to the consumer,” he says.

He is basing the concept of his new restaurant on the Slanted Door, a well-known neo-Vietnamese restaurant with California-style offerings.

“(Slanted Door) is a restaurant that was founded by a Vietnamese immigrant who grew up in California cooking for his family,” he says. “As a result of that, with all the vegetables and all of the fresh seafood and all of those things and being part of the Californian cuisine movement, it will be things that we don’t have in this market.”

The menu will consist of appetizers and entrees with seafood, pork, beef, chicken and vegetarian entrees. Dishes could include features such as whole fish, dayboat scallops, kale and broccoli in a sesame stir-fry.

“There’s a lot of fish. With the market (Bread Garden Market) we have, we get in the best fresh fish there out of both coasts twice a week,” Mondanaro says. “We will use the market downtown for the center of all fish, beef, pork and chicken that goes into the restaurant in Coralville.”

He uses meat and fish from the market at most of his restaurants, which include Micky’s, Givanni’s, Joseph’s Steak House and Saloon. The market opened within the past year at Plaza Towers in downtown Iowa City, filling a vacancy left by Tait’s Natural Foods.

The beverage list at the Coralville location will also reflect the Asian/California blend.

“It will be paralleling the quality of martinis we have at Joseph’s,” he says. “We’ll have some of those things that will be the foundation but there will also be things with fusions that have an Asian/Pacific/California tie-in to them. We’ll have a combination that makes us unique but also makes us comfortable to people who don’t want to try new things.”

The bar and the entire décor will be different from what Coralville strip commuters are accustomed to. He plans to invest $1 million in the restaurant, including changes to the exterior and interior.

“The décor is going to be absolutely gorgeous,” he says. “It’s a complete redo, the color scheme, the tops; everything about the interior will be brand new. It’s going to be fresh.”

Mondanaro plans to ask the city of Coralville to approve changes to the exterior to add a trellis and front patio that match the new concept. Meanwhile, the inside will include a waterfall.

“The whole décor, from a waterfall to the way we’re building it with the color schemes, wait until you see what we’re doing to the vault,” he says. “The vault’s going to have this glowy, glassy finish; it’s going to be unique.”

When complete, the 200-seat venture will be one of about a dozen locally owned restaurants in a sea of chains.

“I think what that comes down to is if we’re going to be out there, then we need to be something unique unto ourselves because we’re still in the center of what’s going on, I believe,” he says. “If you’re in Iowa City or Coralville, North Liberty, that’s a pretty damn good location. So really what it comes down to is that if we’re out there in the heart of chains then we need to be something they’re not and that’s what this is going to be.”

He chose not to rebuild the restaurant as Tomato Pie because of the local competition.

Over the past three or four years we’ve seen a number of restaurants copy the concept of Tomato Pie,” Mondanaro says. “There’s just a whole bunch. So what we want to do is gravitate to a whole new segment.”

The earliest the restaurant would open is mid-November and there is a lot of work to do before then. But Mondanaro remains optimistic.

“It’s important to take this bad thing with the flood and turn it into a positive,” he says. “So we’re going to reshape the old Mondo’s into a new entry into the culinary scene of the Iowa City/Coralville market.”

This article originally appeared in the Corridor Business Journal.