Apple Valley Council Strikes a Conciliatory Tone with Spoon

It all came down to a question of trust.

Just two months after shutting down on all liquor sales at Spoon Fusion Cuisine, Apple Valley City Councilors voted 3-2 to allow the troubled business to sell beer and wine—but not hard liquor—on Thursday night.

Some councilors, like Tom Goodwin, were willing to give the restaurant another shot. Others, including Clint Hooppaw, said two months wasn't enough time for the restaurant to earn back the city's trust.

"We've had too much of a history of short term fixes and short term corrections and promises made, only to have to go back and have another problem pop up," said Hooppaw, referencing the restaurant's rocky relationship with city officials.

Restaurant owners Van Ngo and Kav Theng took over the business in 2011, and in 2012, police responded to a number of calls at the restaurant, including a "riot-like" fight between 20-30 people and a call concerning unlicensed security guards with guns, who were drinking at the restaurant. Many of the police incidents stemmed from nightclub-style events hosted by third party organizers at the restaurant, according to Ngo and Theng.

Click here to read more about the police calls to Spoon.

“What's been most disturbing is the nature of the calls; this is something we’ve never seen before," Apple Valley Police Chief Jon Rechtzigel told the council at a hearing last December.

In January, the council declined to renew the restaurant's liquor license—a move Spoon's former attorney said would likely lead to the restaurant's closure

But the repentant restaurant owners, represented by attorney Daniel Le on Thursday, have addressed many of the issues and forged a better working relationship with the police department and fire inspectors, Le said.

"This hasn’t been easy, they’ve expended a lot of time, money and are accountable. They want to change, but they also want to do business and sustain their business," Le told the council on Thursday.

Le argued that a full beer, wine and intoxicating liquor licenses were essentially to the restaurant's continued success, but the council, citing the restaurant's history, voted to limit Spoon to just beer and wine sales.

As part of the conditions of the restaurant's liquor license, Spoon will only be allowed to host private events like weddings or birthdays—not the public nightclub events that were the source of many of the earlier problems. The restaurant must also hire its own licensed security person to monitor the events.

Council members also took the unusual step of asking Le, who served as an effective cultural bridge between the restaurant owners and city officials, to continue to be involved in the restaurant's future.

"We don’t want businesse to not succeed, we want them to succeed, but we want the kinds of businesses that are going to be safe for the general public," Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland said. "I believe with your involvement, if you can make that kind of commitment to this businsess, that you can be very instrumental in turning a business that wasn’t successful around."