When hospitality veterans Konrad Kantor, Nick Detrich, and Chris Hannah opened the classic Cuban cocktail bar Manolito in 2018, it was a hit right out of the gate, as ‘cocktail heads’ flocked to the tiny 550-square-foot bar at 508 Dumaine St. The owners didn’t know it when they opened, but the tiny size and small overhead of Manolito were massive benefits during the pandemic: Manolito was able to navigate the ever-shifting mandates and remain open all throughout COVID. With the bar being more popular than ever, the owners made the decision to temporarily close and embark on an essential renovation that will double the indoor space.
“Because Nick, Chris and I had been working in the French Quarter for so long, we had popularity right when we opened,” Kantor recently told What Now New Orleans. “But I feel like we gained a lot of popularity outside of the cocktail community because of what we did during COVID.”
The decision was made to keep the concept and menus largely the same. When Manollito reopens this spring, the increased space and seating capacity will allow it to continue serving drinks and food inspired by the El Floridita bar in Havana and its iconic bartender Manuel “Manolito” Aguiar. Kantor said fulfilling that mission was getting harder in the face of rising costs.
“I’m not going to charge $20 for a cocktail. I’m just not gonna do that,” he stressed. “So the only way to make it feasible to continue to operate was to expand and bump up our volume. Adding a second bar well and making the space bigger allows us to up the volume without really doing anything different.
“Now that it will feel more like a restaurant, and less like a broom closet that we’re serving drinks out of, I feel like the product will be perceived to be nicer,” he added. “Our product has always been of the greatest value, but I do think that perceived value got diminished by the space.”
