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December 14, 2004
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Rod and Dawn Nimtz started together with a polka at the Munger Potato Festival and have fashioned a successful new downtown restaurant. Cracked Egg Breakfast Restaurant Goes Evenings: "Bistro Night" Set Thursday
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With the help of the "Gypsy Chef" and considerable people skills, Rod and Dawn Nimtz are polkaing across the downtown Bay City restaurant scene with their smash success at the Cracked Egg, 819 Saginaw St.
Thursday night they will showcase a new facet of the business, evening hours at a special "Bistro Night." (One seating at 6:30 p.m. Call 892-3142 for reservations) "Now we're more than eggs, it's professional dining," exclaims Rod.
"Bistro Night" menus are special. Here's Thursday's fare: Tapas (Spanish style appetizers), Chef's Choice Bruschetta, Stuffed Wonton, crab cakes. Soup: Homemade mushroom basil. Salad: mixed greens with fresh vegetables topped with cheese and croutons, homemade dressings, fresh herb vinaigrette, gorgonzola blue or blue iris, catalina or ranch; featuring grilled foccasia and fruit butter. Choice of entree: Pork Tenderloin Marsala (light wine, lemon); Chicken Parmesan; Tuna Sardona - light shallot, garlic, wine, tomato. All served with pastaor rice and evening vegetables. Dessert: Pistachio bread with vanilla ice cream; key lime pie prepared by Cora Belle's. Price: $25 per person.
The personable pair of restaurateurs opened the Cracked Egg on Nov. 28, 2003, and have been greeting packed houses ever since. Their stories are just as good as their food.
The first day was momentous: The chef they had counted on had abruptly left and Rod was decked out in his cooking outfit ready to fill the gap when in walked "Mugsy."
The "Gypsy Chef," Thomas Schumacher, returned from his journeys of several decades and walked in the Cracked Egg at just the right time.
Thomas Schumacher is "Mugsy," a self-proclaimed "gypsy chef," back home in Bay City after 30 years of world gourmet restaurant travels.
"Fate and destiny definitely had a hand in it," said Mugsy, who fairly drips with cooking expertise and pithy statements about starting restaurants and other business exploits.
Rod grew up in Bridgeport, also spending time on a family farm in Munger. After high school he left for Detroit and a series of jobs in engineering management in automotive and other manufacturing plants. Rod mused: "I was a gypsy of manufacturing, but eight or nine years ago I came back. I had a passion for cooking, and then I met Dawn and it all came together. The best thing I've ever done is to get out of manufacturing and into this."
The couple met at the Munger Potato Festival. "Dawn was standing in line in a tent and I asked her if she polkaed," recalled Rod, adding: "And away we went."
Dawn had been in the National Guard and Army for 16 years, was a decorated E-7 (staff sergeant) and was recognized by the Pentagon as Michigan's top recruiter. She also knows chemical-biological warfare and was a specialist in family support groups. "I decided I had had enough so I retired four years ago," said Dawn.
Both Rod and Dawn attribute the success of the Cracked Egg to her people skills and marketing expertise honed as an Army recruiter. Dawn, originally from Clio, "puts a smile on every day," said Rod. "This is a service industry to us, and that's not just a word." Rod still takes his turn in the kitchen to spell Mugsy.
"Your success is based on the people around you," Mugsy asserted, noting that the restaurant business is one of the toughest there is, with a failure rate as high as nine of 10 new ventures. He commented: "It's more than the food and atmosphere; it's how the people perform as a team. What's happened here is phenomenal, unheard of."
Mugsy started at the old Jacques Restaurant on Sixth Street near the Wenonah Hotel as a sophomore at Handy High. "It was a great place, real home cooking, real mashed potatoes, lard instead of grease," he mused.
"Once I graduated, in 1972, I put my pack on my back and headed for Europe," recalled the diminutive, personable master chef.
Stops included cooking stints at Playboy International Resort in New Jersey, the Pierre and St. Regis hotels in New York City, the Pines in Carmel, California, and a list of Marriotts.
Mugsy learned the inside tricks of the trade from the likes of Arno Schmidt, the "brilliant escoffier" one-time executive chef at the Waldorf Astoria in the Big Apple.
"I told Arno I wanted to go to school to learn to be a master chef," said Mugsy. "He said if you're serious about it forget school, go down to the city and learn the trade on the job. So that's just what I did."
Mugsy counts perhaps his greatest success opening the National Democratic Club in Washington, D.C., buying all the kitchen equipment, dining room china, glass, silver, etc. "There was just the general manager, me and a girl and in six weeks we opened with a gala banquet for 700 guests. We dedicated the third floor dining room at Tip O'Neill's farewell dinner. Everybody who was anybody was there and there was not a dry eye in the house."
Mugsy expounds his philosophy about cooking: "God put so much food on the planet; there's somethingfor everybody's palate."###
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