Michael's On East celebrates 30 years

When walking through the atrium of Michael’s On East anytime between mid October and early May, it’s hard to believe that the place wasn’t always bustling with activity.

It’s difficult to picture the establishment without the wine cellar and ballroom that event planners book two years in advance, or with atrium windows serving as actual storefronts — but that’s exactly what they were when Michael Klauber opened the restaurant in 1987.

Klauber left his former workplace, the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort owned by his father, Murray “Murf” Klauber, in the late ‘80s to start his own establishment. The space he bought off East Avenue and Bahia Vista Street only included what is now the restaurant portion of the building — which was built by Sears, Roebuck & Company — but that changed soon after he brought on a business partner.

Klauber worked with Phil Mancini at the Colony for seven years before he left, and Mancini followed suit two years later to start his own catering business. It was called Sarasota Catering, but when Klauber began letting him use the Michael’s On East kitchen for his orders, Mancini says clients often called his business Michael’s On East catering by mistake.

The two quickly realized the potential they had if they put their heads together and created the business that everyone seemed to assume already existed.

Mancini officially joined the team in 1990, and he didn’t waste any time creating the restaurant’s catering division. Although they say they both did well working their previous jobs at the Colony — Mancini remembers being quite satisfied with the fancy car he could afford — they were glad they left.

“It was time to do it ourselves,” Klauber says.  

And do it they did.

Just a couple years into their partnership, the businessmen decided to create their own event space to expand their catering company even more.

“We’re going to build this ballroom and we’re probably going to go bankrupt,” Mancini recalls telling his mother. “But we’ll figure out a way to pay it back later — we need to give this a shot.”

They couldn’t afford to build it, but then again, they weren’t sure if they could afford not to.

At the time the only other banquet hall in the city was at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota, and it seemed ridiculous to Mancini, who had previously worked as a caterer at countless banquet halls throughout Rhode Island, that Sarasota had so few venues. The idea of building a new space wasn’t even “on anybody’s radar,” he says, and when they brought the idea to the bank to get some support, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be an easy process.

“Banks wouldn’t even touch it,” Mancini says. “They thought we were crazy. Everyone made me feel like we were going to fail.”

They prayed that the critics were wrong — and they were.

The Grand Union supermarket next door soon bought all the storefronts on the south side of the atrium, and the decrease in foot traffic made the the north side available. It just happened to be the side that was connected to the restaurant.

“It turned out that the ballroom space was right under our noses,” Klauber says.

Roughly six months of construction and 17 financial partners later, the ballroom opened in the most convenient space possible in 1993.

The following year, the precursor to Michael’s Wine Cellar, Michael’s Fine Wines & Spirit Merchants, opened in Southside Village. The same year, Michael’s website, bestfood.com, became the first restaurant website in the world. In 2002, Michael’s Wine Cellar opened, and in fall of 2016, Michael’s on the Bay at Selby Gardens opened its doors.

Take a look at the Observer social calendar and see how many events are hosted at a Michael’s establishment — it’s safe to say that Michael’s is the go-to choice of most event organizers in Sarasota.

What’s their secret? It’s pretty simple: quality and consistency.

“This town demands quality on anything,” Mancini says. “A fundraiser used to be secondary to a nice wedding, but it has to be equal in quality nowadays.”

Klauber says they’ve been given plenty of opportunities to cut corners, but they never do. Nomatter what, they continue to push for the best ingredients, cooked fresh.

“That’s still our signature thing today, that we cook it there,” Klauber says of how the catering team always cooks on-site, whether they’re at a Michael’s venue or a different event space. “It’s coming out of the oven and it’s going on the plate. It’s not sitting in a hot box.”

Klauber says new concepts — new dishes, spirits, wines, etc. — also keep people coming back to both the restaurant and the event spaces. Whether it’s a new wine that Klauber and his wife Terri discover on a trip to South Africa or a new fad ingredient like kale that they find a unique way to utilize, the team at Michael’s is always reinventing their menu.

Although it seems like a given that there will always be a demand for Michael’s on the Sarasota social scene, Mancini says they never assume that business will continue to go as well as it has.

“We need to make sure that we maintain that level of quality for everybody every single year,” he says.