Mo’ Betta Gumbo: Put some South in your mouth

LOVELAND — Of all the guests who have been welcomed into Mo’ Betta Gumbo with smiles and Mardi Gras beads, there’s one couple owner Clay Caldwell will never forget.

“They were good customers. We had seen them a lot,” he said. “One day they came in, and they were both crying, talking — and then they signed some papers. I thought they were buying a house.

“It turned out they were signing their divorce papers. They chose Mo’ Betta because for them this was a safe place, a place they loved, where they had talked about their future.

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“That was a most humbling experience for me,” Caldwell said. “They continue to be our customers, with new lives.”

That kind of place is what Caldwell envisioned when he opened his Cajun-themed restaurant in downtown Loveland in 2013. And now he gets to revel in it.

“Sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night, I’ll just stand there with my eyes shut and listen to people laughing, scraping their bowls to get the last drop, grandfathers telling stories to their children. I hear people having relationships, strengthening their relationships — not on their phones, other than to take photos of the experience. And that’s very powerful.

“We’ve seen people on their first dates, and then they come and get engaged here, and continue on as married customers.”

Well, not exactly customers. Caldwell insists on calling them guests.

“I don’t have customers,” he said. “Customers do drive-throughs. This is not a sterile, drive-through mentality. We’re not going to hand you a machine where you order your food on it, check out and pay your bill on it.”

Instead, he said, “we have guests — about 2,300 a week. We treat them like I would treat them if they were in my home. That’s part of our training. We offer them an experience, a purpose.”

And Mardi Gras beads. “We go through about 10,000 beads a week, one string at a time,” Caldwell said. “A lot of our customers will bring ‘em back after they get a big pile of ‘em. We’ll spray ‘em down, clean ‘em up and reuse ‘em.”

Central to the experience is a menu full of classic southern, Cajun and Creole fare: fried green tomatoes with remoulade, hush puppies, crawfish, jambalaya, catfish, étouffée, shrimp and grits, po’ boy sandwiches, and gumbo brimming with chicken, seafood and andouille sausage. Sweet treats include puffy beignets and bananas Foster bread pudding. Wash it all down with sweet tea, Café du Monde chicory coffee or a locally brewed beer. The bar includes an array of mules, a traditional Hurricane, two dozen flavors of moonshine, and specialty drinks with names such as Crippled Pimp, Mo’ Betta Mama, Rope-a-Dope and Gator-Tini.

“I grew up with the food, but I did not grow up with the culture,” Caldwell said. “I was raised in Arkansas, far north for the culture but the food was common. Most of these are family recipes; some from our family, but in the South these are generational. Everybody has had a say-so in them. We made some adaptation to the Colorado lifestyle — some gluten-free considerations — but just minor adjustments.”

Trained in much more formal fare at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, Caldwell had been a chef in some classy confines in Atlanta and Scottsdale, Ariz., then spent 16 years as a consultant in Texas. “But I just got tired of big-city life. I decided to move to Colorado and start a little gumbo store and start enjoying my life.”

The search for where to locate took two years, but the revitalization of downtown Loveland won Caldwell over in the fall of 2012.

“I have a very strong passion for downtown,” he said. “It’s consuming. Downtown is exploding. There’s been over $200 million in private investment in construction. It’s really picking up its own synergy.”

It didn’t hurt that Terry Madigan had just closed Teraza’s Not Just Gyros at the prominent northwest corner of Fourth Street and Cleveland Avenue. “That building was built in 1876 when Loveland became a town and the railroad went through,” Caldwell said. “It may be the oldest commercial building in town. It’s been everything from a mercantile to a clothing store, shoe shop, gun store, Italian deli and then the little Greek diner. (Madigan) had been in the industry for a long time and was ready to try something new.”

Mo’ Betta Gumbo opened with 1,700 square feet of space, 300 of which is the kitchen. Now, with five years of success under his belt, Caldwell is ready to expand.

“I’ve had three landlords in three years,” he said. “This current landlord (Jim Hargrave) is a general contractor. He’s making all those needed changes structurally that I would have to have in order to expand. We’re working with architect Jim Cox on moving forward with expansion. We’re taking the space next to us,” which had been Loveland Pawn. “We’ll pick up an extra 4,000 square feet and build out a large kitchen, and that will enable us to do catering and a lot more variety of food.

“We want to add more of our soul food and low-country food options — chicken fried steak, meatloaf, homemade biscuits, potatoes and gravy. Right now, if you don’t like rice or sandwiches or fried catfish, you’re limited here.”

He’s also expanding into other cuisines and other parts of downtown.

Caldwell opened Loveland TapHouse on Feb. 9, during Fire and Ice Weekend, in a 117-year-old building at 237 E. Fourth St. There’s 1,000 square feet in the building and a 1,000-square-foot patio in back, in a space that for two decades had been Scotty O’Brian’s until that business closed on New Year’s Eve. “We bought their business and location,” Caldwell said, “and changed the name in order to keep the tavern license.”

The space features 32 taps, and all its beer, wine and spirits are Colorado products. “We celebrate the industry,” Caldwell said. “I’m not a beer drinker personally, and when we went out as a group we’d go out to some different local breweries and not everybody was enamored with their styles of beer. So we said we need to be an aggregator, a cheerleader, an educator about all these breweries, distilleries and wineries. We need to be the ones who tell their stories, share their passion. So we provided a business model that drinks like a martini bar, a whiskey bar and a taphouse — so all your friends can find something they’re happy with and find their own journey every time they come back.”

Later this spring he’ll open Miss Daisy’s BBQ & Blues in 3,400 square feet at 147 E. Fifth St. “That was originally a Packard dealership,” he said. “Over time it was an upholstery shop and most recently a custom guitar shop (Heritage Lutherie). It’s a historical building but not on the registry. It has a great patina. It’s made with local brick, but not the highest quality. Every wall was falling down. It needed some TLC.”

Miss Daisy is the mother of Mike Babbs, Caldwell’s longtime friend from Dallas who is a partner in the project. “She’s a little, petite church lady who raised several large sons, all sports oriented,” Caldwell said. “They’re simple country people, like we were, and this is telling their family story of barbecue and music.

“We’ll do some great barbecue, Memphis style with dry rub, simple southern — we’re not going to have a mango chutney with it. We blend all our own spices so we can verify quality, and there’s no filler.

“We’ll have live blues too, on a stage. We’ll have live national acts that stop in; we’ll cherry pick the very best of the region and develop that culture over time.”

Caldwell has gotten his share of industry acclaim and glowing press since Mo’ Betta Gumbo opened — including a visit in February from a fledgling television show called “Frontier Tastes and Tales.” But he’s determined not to let it go to his head.

“I got really tired of restaurant concepts that were about the chef rather than the guests,” he said. “I would be foolish to think this is about me. Food is a vehicle. Atmosphere is a vehicle. Hospitality, music — all vehicles for the guest to have a wonderful time. I just want to build an atmosphere people can identify with, and bring their own magic and excitement to the dining room every time they come in.”