Rita Mondus and the last of her employees working Monday night closed Anello’s Torch Lite about 11 p.m., never thinking it was going to be for the final time.
A little over two hours later, Mondus, who lives in the house next door with her husband, John, saw smoke coming out of the restaurant.
Firefighters from Shawano and Bonduel were called around 1:30 a.m. and battled the blaze in below-zero temperatures and frigid wind chills well into Tuesday morning, but were unable to save the landmark building. Late Tuesday afternoon firefighters were still on scene putting out isolated flare-ups.
“Everything is a total loss,” Mondus said.
Mondus said she and her husband were still shocked and stunned late Tuesday as the loss began to sink in.
“You go outside, and you realize your whole life has changed,” she said.
That’s also the case, she added, for the restaurant’s dozen or so employees, some of whom have worked at the restaurant for 25 years.
“It takes their entire paycheck away,” Mondus said, as well as the tips that made up most of their income.
“Even if you file for unemployment, you can’t prove tips,” she said.
Mondus said she had been in contact with the employees Tuesday.
“They’re in shock, too,” she said.
It took firefighters about an hour and a half to contain the blaze. Crews laid sand and salt on the street and sidewalks where water from the firefighting effort had quickly turned to ice.
The fire closed a portion of East Green Bay Street (state Highway 22) for several hours.
It also threatened the Mondus’ home as cinders from the fire began landing on the roof, Mondus said.
“It was raining cinders, and they were sticking and starting to burn,” she said.
An additional fire crew from Bonduel was called to hose down the roof.
“We have a little water damage, but it’s livable,” Mondus said.
Animals in the restaurant’s petting zoo are kept in a separate structure and were unharmed.
Once the blaze was extinguished, fire crews used a backhoe to pull the building apart to look for hot spots.
Officials were still investigating the cause of the blaze, but, Mondus said, they will probably never know, given the extent of the damage.
What is known, she said, is that the fire started in the basement, where compressors, an ice machine and food storage were located. Mondus speculated the fire might have been an electrical problem.
Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t spotted during the ritual walk-through of the building and basement at closing time, Mondus said.
“Everything was functioning,” she said. “There wasn’t a thing wrong.”
Mondus has operated Anello’s Torch Lite for 31 years. The building, at 1276 E. Green Bay St., dates back to 1897, though it has seen numerous reconstructions and additions since then.
“It was a landmark,” Mondus said. “It was here before there was a Green Bay Street or Highway 22 or 29. It was Military Wagon Road.”
The property has always been a restaurant since 1897, when it was the Continental.
According to the Anello’s web site, it also had “a house of ill repute” upstairs during the Roaring ’20s and was frequented by the likes of Al Capone and John Dillinger.
The Continental later became Club Continental, and operated under that name until 1969 when it became the Bavarian Inn. It became Anello’s Torch Lite in 1981.
Mondus said she doesn’t know what happens now.
“Do we rebuild or what?” she said. “I have no idea.”
She said it would take at least another day for the couple to start collecting their thoughts.
Mondus said she plans to keep the petting zoo going, but the loss of the restaurant will be felt there, too.
Many of the animals, particularly the smaller ones, were fed scraps left behind by restaurant customers, she said.
“We couldn’t afford to feed them by ourselves,” Mondus said.
Mondus expressed her gratitude to the firefighters and police who responded to the fire.
“They work so diligently,” she said. “It was cold and windy and miserable. And they were so concerned about the animals and the people. They’re a good force of people.”
It was the second fire in less than a year at Anello’s, though the other one wasn’t in the restaurant. It started at the petting zoo on Jan. 31 — at about the same time, around 1:30 a.m. — when one of the animals knocked over a space heater, causing some straw to catch fire.
The smoke was spotted by a Shawano police officer and firefighters were on scene to knock the fire down before it could do much damage.
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