by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
With over 20 years of fine dining experience, Jerry Moran decided to try something different.
Last September, he opened Panini Oh! on Laura Street in the Elks Club Building.
“I hope people realize when they are making a decision on where to eat, that yes, we might be slightly more expensive than the guy down the street, but the guy down the street is not serving what we offer here,” he said. “They are not doing what we do.”
What Moran is trying to do, after spending months remodeling and dealing with the City’s bureaucracy, is provide the downtown lunch crowd with an option.
“It was horrible in here,” said Moran. “It looked like Hitler’s bunker. It was really that bad. It was a slimy mess. It took us eight months to renovate it.”
A lot of the problem stemmed from obtaining permits.
“If they want development in downtown, they don’t have to let up on the building codes, but they need a new set for these historic buildings,” said Moran.
Moran cited one example: a wall in the restaurant was inspected eight times and failed each time because it didn’t meet a two-hour fire rating.
Moran has a long history in the restaurant business, dating to 1983.
“We opened a fine dining restaurant, Pasta Fresca, back in 1983 in Orange Park and we did a lot of things people had never seen before,” said Moran. “We did things that have never been done before in Jacksonville. We were very popular and also a very controversial sort of place.”
Moran built a 7,000 square-foot building for the restaurant, moving it from Kingsley Avenue to Wells Road. In 1990, he closed Pasta Fresca and opened La Cena in Orlando.
“But, then I said to myself, ‘What are we doing down here,’” said Moran. “We don’t have any family here. I had the opportunity to sell the place, so I did.”
He came back to Jacksonville in 1994 and opened La Cena on Old St. Augustine Road.
“That worked well, but again, there is a very limited interest in fine dining in Jacksonville,” he said. “We always did well with the restaurant, but it was discouraging to see the same people week after week. It was hard having to manage the food while not being busy.”
He was still running La Cena when David Surface, formerly of Wilson and Nolan, called him about opening a restaurant in the Elks Club Building, which was being remodeled.
“It sounded interesting and it would be a break away from fine dining,” said Moran. “It sounded like something that would have a more general appeal. The big worry was getting up in the morning, because I had never gotten up in the morning before noon.”
After a couple of years of negotiating, he made the deal to open downtown and started renovating the space last January.
The restaurant offers panini, which are toasted Italian sandwiches, regular sandwiches and homemade soups and salads. Customers fill out a form to order their food.
“It’s sort of a modified self-service thing,” said Moran. “You come in and fill out a form and either order a panini or put together a custom sandwich or salad the way you’d like it made. You hand the order to the cashier and the order is then transmitted back to the kitchen and cooks get a solid copy of it and they know exactly what you want. I had seen panini in Italy and said these are really good and something that I might like to do in the future.
Thus the name Panini Oh!
“You pick up a panini, take a bite and say, ‘Oh! it’s good’,” said Moran.
All the bread is baked fresh daily and all the food is prepared fresh too.
“We bake all the bread and roast all the meat. We are not kidding around in here food and quality-wise,” said Moran. “That’s one of the things I hope people realize downtown is that I’m not buying the cheapest bread and mayonnaise. I’m making all the salad dressings and baking all the different kinds of bread.”
Open from 11 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. weekdays, it also offers fresh baked pastries, gourmet coffee and ice cream, but these haven’t been the best sellers.
“It surprised me. I put in all these refrigerated cases and since I am a pastry chef I made all kinds of pastries with fruit and biscottis and nobody eats them,” said Moran. “Another thing I didn’t realize is that I thought we could do a great coffee business. I got these very expensive coffee dispensers and I thought people would buy coffee. Well, I might as well fill them with jelly beans. I also brought in Häagen Daaz ice cream and the freezer runs constantly and we sell little or no ice cream.”
Panini prices range from $5.95 for a Caprese (mozzarella, prosciutto, tomatoes and basil leaves on Italian white bread) to $6.95 for a Rueben (corned beef, Swiss cheese, kraut and Russian dressing on Rye bread). Or you can get a sandwich for $5.95 or a half a sandwich and soup or salad for $6.25.
The restaurants seats 100 people, and in addition to being a lunch spot, Moran is planning to host private parties. At some point, he would like to convert Panini Oh! to a fine dining restaurant.
“Fine dining is something I really enjoyed doing,” said Moran. “I still have all the old guys from the previous restaurants working with me, but we are doing this now.”