La Fia/Merchant Bar owners unsure when they'll reopen after Saturday's looting

Andrea Sikora on Monday said her two downtown Wilmington restaurants are "in shambles" after they were looted Saturday night.

Sikora, who runs La Fia and Merchant Bar with her chef husband Bryan Sikora, said she isn't yet sure when the boarded-up Market Street businesses will reopen.

Plans to welcome customers back to La Fia on Thursday are now on hold. 

"I really don't know yet what we're going to do," Sikora said Monday. "We were supposed to open [La Fia] on Thursday. But now we're thinking, 'let the city calm down.'"

As a safety precaution, the couple also boarded the windows of their other Wilmington restaurant, Crow Bar, in Trolley Square. The restaurant was not damaged or attacked. It will likely only continue to offer takeout for the time being.

"We had been hearing there was going to be another riot. We just didn't want to take any chances," said Sikora. "We didn't want to leave it vulnerable."

What began as a peaceful protest on Saturday in downtown Wilmington for George Floyd, the black Minnesota man who died begging for air after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck, turned violent later into the early evening as some in the crowd began breaking storefront windows and looting businesses.

Sikora said she was standing on a Wilmington street on Saturday about 6 p.m. when a man with a baseball bat began smashing the windows and doors at Bardea restaurant, about three blocks away from La Fia and Merchant Bar.

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Chef Dwain Kulp, who was inside La Fia, was keeping Sikora up-to-date on what was happening with the crowd outside their businesses.

All seemed calm outside La Fia, so Sikora said she went to the couple's Crow Bar restaurant in Trolley Square to help with takeout service there. 

Kulp contacted Sikora again at 7 p.m. to let her know the tension seemed to be escalating.

Shortly after, some in the crowd milling on Market Street began smashing La Fia's front window and glass doors. They also smashed planters outside of the restaurant. Kulp left the restaurant and was not injured, Sikora said.

Sikora, using her cell phone, viewed security cameras positioned in Merchant Bar at 426 N. Market St., that's less than a block away from La Fia.

She saw the three 10-by-10-foot windows there also were smashed and watched as about 20 people streamed inside the building and began stealing bottles of alcohol.

"It was surreal and it was terrifying," she said. "I was down there right after it happened. You couldn't imagine the amount of glass. That was so hard and sad to see."

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Sikora said thousands of dollars in alcohol were stolen. Looters also tried to rip out cash registers, tore computers and wiring from the walls and damaged cash drawers. 

La Fia and Merchant Bar are located in historic buildings. Sikora said the three windows at Merchant Bar need to be replaced, and the front doors and windows at La Fia also were damaged and smashed. The La Fia market was untouched.

Sikora said immediately after the windows were smashed and the restaurants were looted, local volunteers and city workers swooped in to help.

"The cleaning was nonstop," she said. By 11 a.m. Sunday, all the windows were boarded up.

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While the restaurant has "a good amount of reservations" for a planned Thursday opening, Sikora said she will make a decision on Tuesday about whether they might wait another week or more to reopen.

"Right now, with everything we're dealing with, to start talking about a menu, and the news cycle is about protests and riots, and the [coronavirus] pandemic, it doesn't feel right. How do you open a restaurant now?"

The restaurants' landlord, Buccini-Pollin, is hoping to replace the broken windows and doors by Tuesday, and Sikora said restaurant employees are coming in to try to get the businesses back in working shape.

While La Fia "is definitely going to be opening sometime," Sikora said there are no immediate plans for Merchant Bar.

She said the business is mostly a place for people to drink and socialize. With the new state mandates that limit occupancy due to the coronavirus, and social distancing rules that owners need to follow, the bar could only seat eight people at a time. 

"It won't make any sense financially to open Merchant Bar until people are going back to work in Wilmington, and there are shows back at the Queen and the Grand," she said.

What has Sikora most concerned now is whether the dining crowd will even return to the city of Wilmington.

"Our restaurants will get put back together, but there are bigger issues going on, like are going people support Market Street again?"

Contact Patricia Talorico at (302) 324-2861 or ptalorico@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @pattytalorico