Owners will keep Ft. Bragg’s Mendo Bistro open, after all

An unusual contest that offered up a lauded Fort Bragg restaurant and bar in exchange for a 250-word essay and a $100 entry fee has been called off.

The owners of the 88-seat Mendo Bistro and Barbelow bar said they’ve had a change of heart and are returning the entry fees to the contestants. The contest also was short on applicants.

“We are canceling our contest and renewing our commitment to Mendo Bistro, to our community, and both our families,” the owners announced on the 16-year-old restaurant’s website.

The bar located downstairs from Mendo Bistro, however, will be closing at the end of the week in order to free up more time for family and other interests, major concerns cited by owner and chef Nicholas Petti when he announced the contest. Petti also is a full-time culinary instructor at Mendocino College.

“Something had to give for us to continue” running Mendo Bistro. “That something is Barbelow,” said the website statement.

Petti launched the contest in late August. It required applicants to write an essay explaining why they should be chosen.

Petti said in a text message that he was unsure how many people had applied, but it was “definitely short of the number called for in the rules.”

At least 7,500 people needed to apply by Dec. 18 or the contest could be canceled, according to the rules established when the contest was announced over the summer. That number of entries would have raised $750,000.

It’s a rare, but not ?unheard-of, way to sell a business. Maine innkeeper Janice Sage won her bed-and-breakfast in such a contest in 1993 and offered it up earlier this year to contestants willing to pay $125 each. There were 7,255 entries, earning her a little over $906,000, according to news reports.

In a telephone message, Petti said his family began having misgivings as the entries started to pour in.

He said he didn’t read them all, but “the ones that we did read made me recognize that we really would be giving something fabulous away and that we might want to rethink that decision.”

Another factor in their decision was the adverse reaction from their young son, Marlon, and from their customers, to the proposed sale.

“So many people were upset,” the owners posted on their website.

And while the move was aimed largely at having more time to spend with their son, they wondered what they would do when he grows up.

“There would be this huge hole left where the bistro was when Marlon left,” Petti said in the phone message.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter.