There's buzz on the Eastern Shore about a new restaurant. Daphne resident Roy Dobbs showed up Monday to see if Mandina's lived up to the hype he read on Facebook.
"The seafood gumbo was out of this world, and that's what I came to see if it's out of this world," said Dobbs.
Dobbs had to wait a while to find out. He came up hours before Mandina's officially opened its doors for the first time Monday night. The owner, Frank Marcello, says for weeks customers have been showing up. The problem? Employees weren't, which delayed the opening one week.
"I think we had hired, maybe 20 or 21, and I think eight showed up," said Marcello.
Marcello says originally, they wanted to open in May but other delays kept pushing them back.
"Just getting the equipment in from out of state. There's fewer truckers, fewer people in the warehouses to load the trucks. So we've got stuff that should have been here three weeks ago that won't be there for another five or six weeks," said Marcello.
It's not Marcello's first rodeo. He says he's opened 20 restaurants in his career and is confident Mandina's in Spanish Fort will be a hit.
"We are the sister company to the Mandina's on Canal Street. We have the same turtle soup throughout the year, spaghetti and meatballs, trout meuniere. We do homemade meatballs, everything is made from scratch. So, everybody come out," said Marcello.
Right now, they're just serving dinner. Eventually, they'll serve both lunch and dinner. They've got to add more staff and have both part-time a full-time jobs open.