MudBugs Cajun Kitchen reopened on Sanibel this week after recovering from Hurricane Ian damage.
First opening its doors in December 2018, owner Ron Rice intended to build a fun, relaxing New Orleans atmosphere with live music and great food, modeled after his numerous visits to The Big Easy with his wife.
“When you start a restaurant, you want to do something a little bit unique and different than everybody else,” Rice said. “The question was what can we do that is wildly popular in other places that’s not here.”
Mud Bugs offers various food authentic to New Orleans such as char-grilled oysters, po’boy sandwiches, jambalaya and more.
The restaurant is popular to Sanibel residents and visitors, with success Rice attributes to his employees. “We really are a great team of people,” he said. “All of our employees who we have working today are the same ones we had working before. They all waited.”
The staff at MudBugs were first to show up and put all hands on deck after the restaurant suffered about 6 feet of flooding from the Sept. 28 storm. Rice said three employees started returning to the restaurant by boat to help recover, remaining consistent every day until the restaurant was able to reopen.
“They never stopped,” he said. “There were days where these people were working and wondering if they actually accomplished anything. The environment was pretty challenging, but they just kept at it literally every day. This was really just hard work, dedication and love for where you work and what it was to get it back and get it going again.”
Some employees stayed on the second floor of the restaurant throughout the storm, watching the water quickly rise below them, then quickly recede. “Some of them have dedicated their lives to MudBugs because they proclaimed that if we weren’t there for them and they didn’t have a place to go they may not have made it,” Rice said. “You can’t replace that loyalty and love.”
Since the building was constructed four years ago, it held up well against natural elements, with all doors, windows, walls and the roof remaining intact after the hurricane.
As Sanibel prepares to reopen to the public Monday, Rice remains optimistic that opening the island back up will result in faster reconstruction and rebuilding.
“There’s going to be people that come to support businesses but there’s also obviously people that want to come and help,” Rice said. “If folks want to come over and help support like they are in Fort Myers Beach, I kind of look at it as this can be a very positive thing where you can get more help from others.”
Mud Bugs is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, allowing time for people to get where they need to be before the island’s 9 p.m. curfew.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll get some support from our friends on the mainland and, obviously, the residents will be very supportive,” Rice said. “We’ve got the full menu going, we’ve got all this stuff that people learned to love and we have the same staff and bartenders that people will be very familiar with.”
