Mineola Restauranteur Responds to Reported Complaints

George Echeverria wants to set the record straight about what a pair of his neighbors have been saying about his restaurant, Eric’s Italian Bistro.

The Mineola-based Italian restaurant had been the subject of some complaints from residents at a village board meeting regarding valet parking, events, vents and smells.

Echeverria says that the complaints stem from two of his neighbors, one from Geranium Avenue who complained during the June 5 meeting of the Mineola Village Board at the village hall about “events, really loud, the rear door open, rowdy patrons.”

She also complained at the meeting about the valet parking practices as attendants allegedly were racing cars down the alley behind the restaurant and noise and smell emanating from a roof vent.

Another resident on Juniper Avenue allegedly called with noise complaints and also about cars in the parking lot next to the restaurant.

“I don’t think they have it out for me, I think they have it out for the location,” Echeverria said. “They can’t have it out for me because they don’t know me.”

The building in which the restaurant is located at 70 Old Country Road was once the location of the former bar/ lounge Kemistry  Echeverria said that he was aware of the location’s history when it operated under the Kemistry lounge moniker as well as incidents which occurred at the location, including a 50-person fight which took place one night in June 2012.

“From my own research... they were venues that were mainly bar oriented or lounge-oriented; their main source of income came from bar business which came along with music... so I had no worries because that’s far from what I am,” he said.

The portion of the building in which the restaurant space is located is owned by Sen. Jack Martins, but Echeverria said he has no other ties to him, political or otherwise and the building is operated by a management company.

“There seems to be some kind of misconception that because the landlord is Jack, that special treatment is being given to this location,” he said.

A graduate of H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square, Echeverria operated in Five Towns for 10 years as the own Soigne, a top-rated French restaurant before being taken on as a consulting chef at Andiamo on Mineola Boulevard.

“Andiamo was supposed to only be for me a three-month gig,” Echeverria said. “I ended up staying there longer because the owners were absent owners and they had hired a management company that never worked out.”

Echeverria said that he was offered a partnership in the restaurant but was not interested and the location closed down in March. He later opened Eric’s Italian Bistro the following month.

“There are some neighbors who unfortunately are not happy that this is a restaurant,” Echeverria said, noting problems began at the location when he rented the 20-lot parking area to the east to park customers’ vehicles as part of an agreement with a law firm next-door.

Regarding the noise complaints, Echeverria said that “anything other than this,” pointing to the female vocalist’s song playing over the speaker system, “doesn’t go with my type of establishment. You come here on a Saturday night, the age level of my clientele is 50-up; you don’t find too many kids in their 20’s here, much less children. If my intent was to maintain a lunge, the last thing I would have done was cut the bar in half.”

Echeverria stated that an inspector from the village came and “found nothing that was wrong with my vent,” as well as other building department officials. “My fan’s as quiet as it can get. So he goes ‘my car makes more noise than the fan does’.”

On July 23, Echeverria said he received a visit from the fire marshall’s office who was responding to a complaint about the fan from one of the neighbors again.

“He put his head underneath the hood, he went outside, he went up to the building, he went away from the building, tells me ‘I don’t even hear the fan, it’s so quiet’. We took a walk to where the next residential home is; the air conditioners were louder than the fan. Even though the vent that goes up looks old... it’s brand-new, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, adding of the neighbor on Geranium Avenue, “if you go to her house, there is a deli right here, pizza and (a restaurant) that is the same distance as mine. How can you tell out of a deli, a pizzeria, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian restaurant that the odor it comes from here, if there is such an odor?”

Pulling out his phone, Echeverria displays some photos of garbage that he and his staff clear away from the front of the restaurant that is generated by the second-floor apartments as well as refuse and bottles from the bushes behind the location in order to preserve a clean exterior until trash collection. He stated that he has filed complaints himself about the practice.

The restaurant does provide valet service to customers which was also mandated by the village as a hold-over condition from the Kemistry permit.

“I was never told that I had to, but then I got a visit from the building department and they said to me... ‘these are the guidelines that Kemistry had to follow and we recommend for you to follow them as well.’ None of them sounded uncalled for, I had no objections with any of them,” he said.

Echeverria said that he employs a company – Parking Systems – to provides him with valets, but he began to requested a particular individual to be the one providing service at his restaurant, one with whom he felt comfortable and with a good track record.

So far, the two neighbors in question have been the only ones who have complained about the restaurant.

“Every single day I have people stopping by, neighbors, business owners,” Echeverria said, “a tremendous positive of good luck wishes.”

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