Monica Cobb, pictured in front of artwork in Monica’s with her 100 club certificate.
Tessa Noble
Monica’s, a chef-driven restaurant in Beaumont, does not operate like most restaurants, and owner Monica Cobb said that is by design.
Cobb said cooking is more than preparing a meal — it is creating art. Her husband and daughter are painters, and their pieces line the restaurant’s walls. Cobb said she approaches every dish in her restaurant with the same creativity her family brings to the canvas.
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“Being a chef is also like being an artist to me,” Cobb said. “(Here) we get to showcase not only my food as an art, but it’s (also) like coming into a little gallery of local artists in Beaumont too.”
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Unlike most restaurants, which have standard business hours, Monica’s offers occasional lunch pop-ups and planned dinners inspired by Gulf Coast cuisine. Cobb said guests at Monica’s are not simply paying for food; they are experiencing the passion, creativity and hospitality she puts into every meal. She said she and her staff hope guests see the work that goes into each meal and enjoy eating at Monica’s.
“We hope that they get to experience being a part of something that everybody wants to belong and experience,” Cobb said. “It’s joyful, and not only are the customers excited about being there, but we are too. So we hope that they walk away with more joy, open-mindedness, open-heartedness, forgiveness and a path to enjoying life and just having pure joy when they step into our restaurant, and when they get to come back and experience that again and carry it on and spread the joy.”
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Monica’s recently earned a perfect score on its health inspection and was chosen in a drawing for the Beaumont Enterprise’s 100 Club. Cobb said part of earning a 100 means acknowledging the rules and following them. The Enterprise spoke with Cobb about her restaurant, her philosophy on hospitality and what it takes to maintain health standards:
Q: What sets Monica’s apart from other restaurants in the area, and how would you describe it to someone who has never been?
A: We are chef-driven. I am the female-driven force that is creating everything. I’m hands-on with everything, and what sets us apart is that we are not open to the public like all of the other normal restaurants. That’s the number one thing. We do lunch pop-ups when we feel like the customers really need it, and then for the rest of our dining, it is private dining only. Meaning, we will publish when we’re doing a dinner, and then people will see the menu and the price for it, and they have to prepay for it. That way we know exactly how many people are coming and who all has paid, and we know exactly how much food to buy.
Q: When and why did you open Monica’s?
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A: We started out in 2016 on a food trailer to launch the Bon Mon, and that was my play on the banh mi. I needed a commercial kitchen and a dining room to launch my product that I was selling on a food truck, and it got too hot on the food truck. I’m a chef; I went to culinary school, and I trained under Wolfgang Puck in Hollywood. I knew I could do a lot more than just selling sandwiches on a food trailer. So I needed a restaurant to highlight and give me the stage and a big kitchen to cook in. So we started doing lunches for the first five years, and now I pop up and do lunches so that I can afford to do the private extravagant dinners.
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Q: What do you think earning a perfect health inspection score communicates to the public, and how does it make you feel?
A: I think that transparency, especially in the food business, is paramount. People deserve to know what goes on behind closed doors. I try to keep my kitchen as open as possible, so that anybody can walk in. Obviously, not during service because we’re so busy, but to be able to have a health inspector that sees how hard we work to keep a kitchen clean, to follow the rules and to be acknowledged for that — it makes me feel like I’m being seen and heard. If I can work hard enough to get 100 and somebody can look for all of the reasons I should get 100 and not all of the reasons why they should take a point off, then I feel like everybody’s encouraging everybody, and everybody feels safe because at the end of the day, we all just want to feel safe. There’s a lot of trust in coming to a restaurant and letting somebody feed you, and that’s the whole point of our system. It’s kind of like buying a house; buyer beware. If you see you walk into a restaurant and they’ve got a low score, at least you were told.
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Q: Why do you think it’s important to recognize restaurants that earn high inspection scores?
A: It gives attention to all those people that are out there doing hard work. You don’t go into the restaurant business to become a millionaire. That’s 100% true. It’s incredibly hard to get a score of 100, keep your doors open and keep a commercial roof over your head for 10 years. The more people who know how hard we’re working for them, the more beneficial it is for the entire community. We’re able to sell more food, make more money, pay more taxes, and keep this community thriving.
Q: What should people know about Monica’s before they visit?
A: Everything that goes into Monica’s restaurant is coming from a place of love and creativity. We’re all about sustainability, not just sustainability in food, but the sustainability of the hands that are creating the food, and that we can’t work 24/7, and that we’re not always open. We might not be your cup of tea, but we are somebody’s cup of tea, and we work hard when we are open to provide excellence in all areas of our restaurant.
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Q: If someone were visiting Monica’s for the first time, what menu item would you recommend and why?
A: Well, if they were visiting our restaurant for lunch for the first time and they didn’t have any kind of food allergies or anything, I would recommend that they try the Elvis Bon Mon. The Elvis Bon Mon is such a fun sandwich. It’s our play on the Vietnamese banh mi, and Elvis Presley — we’ve always heard about the sandwich he liked to eat — was a bacon, peanut butter and banana sandwich, and so we were like, how could we incorporate a sandwich after Elvis like that too? So we make the pork loin Elvis Bon Mon sandwich with fried plantains and all of the other usual suspects, and then we add the Vietnamese peanut sauce without the peanuts because we don’t want anybody to have an allergic reaction to peanuts, but it still tastes like peanut butter if you can imagine that. So that is a joyful flavor profile that just highlights a lot of the fusion that we do here for lunch. Then, if you came in for dinner, I would just say have an open mind and don’t eat much all day, and just try every single thing that comes your way because it is amazing and it’s very inspired by the Gulf Coast and the surrounding area that we live in and all of the farmers that make it happen.
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Q: What’s one lesson you’ve learned as a restaurant owner that has stayed with you?
A: The biggest lesson for me that I’ve learned as a restaurant owner is less is more, specifically on a menu and on what you can and can’t do. The more you try to provide for people, the more you’re knocking years off of your own life. We can’t give them all at once, and that’s the sustainability. Stretch it out as far as you can. It’s not a race. It’s a marathon, and pass the baton. Ask for help. Trust your employees. Trust everyone to be able to do the work and create. Give them the space that they need to be able to create and feel the harmony.
