Ace of Steaks owner Marion Hodge will be serving again tomorrow. Picture: ROBERT PEET
Ace of Steaks was badly damaged by a deliberately lit fire last year. Picture: SYLVIA LIBER
Reopening her restaurant three months after an arson attack was harder than Marion Hodge expected.
In December, just six days after she and her partner opened the Ace of Steaks in Dapto, arsonists caused thousands of dollars in damage to the restaurant.
On top of that, there were several break-ins at the empty restaurant, where thieves stole a microwave and other items.
The fire and thefts hit Ms Hodge's partner hard.
"My partner has walked out on the whole thing and doesn't want anything to do with it, so I'm now doing it by myself," Ms Hodge said.
"He doesn't want to go through it all again. He took it a lot harder than what I did.
"I knew I'd start again but, at one stage, when everything was going wrong, I thought I wasn't going to bother. But we put all our money in it and I didn't want to walk away from it, and I had my family employed and they needed their jobs back.
"So I thought we'll give it one more go."
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The fire in December just six days after being opened meant Ms Hodge wasn't able to capitalise on the early interest shown in the restaurant.
"We got a bigger response towards the end of those six days than what we expected," she said.
"If we'd stayed open it would have picked up further. We'd advertised but the advertisements went out after we were already burnt down. We had a lot of people ringing and we just had to tell them we were closed."
The bulk of the damage was done by soot from the fire, which went through all the containers, cupboards and fridges.
"It was very hard to clean," Ms Hodge said.
"I thought I'd be able to clean it and get back into business by Christmas. When I started I realised I couldn't wipe it off - and it was on everything. I had to get special cleaners in who deal with fire-damaged premises."
After much hard work, she'll finally be back in business tomorrow, a day she is looking forward to.
"I'm very excited about it and I'm happy I've got my children a job again because it's very hard to get work at the moment."