Bradenton restaurant featured twice on Food Network has reopened in new location
In 2015, celebrity chef Robert Irvine, known for his blunt talk and muscled arms, featured Theresa’s Restaurant in his “Restaurant: Impossible” TV show on the Food Network.
In 2019, he returned to produce a new segment and to see how well owner Jodi Boucher had implemented his suggestions for improving the restaurant, including freshening up the decor and tinkering with the menu.
Moreover, he wanted to see how well Boucher had done in relaxing her hands-on management style.
“Jodi was, well, intense,” Irvine told the Herald in 2020. “The minute I walked in the door she wanted to take control of me and everything that I wanted to do.”
While not responding directly to Irvine’s critique, Boucher says that her name is on every plate that comes out of her kitchen. It was the same kind of drive and commitment that led Boucher to work 12 years without taking a day off at one stretch.
Fourteen months ago, Boucher, faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and with an increase in rent for the 14th Street West location, where she had served customers for 15 years, decided to close and reopen at a new address.
Little did she know that she was starting an impossible restaurant challenge of another sort.
She was thinking that it might take six months to reopen in a new location, but she didn’t reckon on the construction challenges that would accompany putting a restaurant into an older space and bringing it up to code. Or that doing anything during a global pandemic seemed to be exponentially harder than during normal times.
On Sunday, the persistence and hard work paid off with a grand opening of her new location at 711 Manatee Ave. E.
“It feels great and a lot of people have wished me well and thanked me for not giving up. You can’t be in business so long and not know your customers,” Boucher said Monday. “A lot of people have said they missed my food, and that made me happy.”
The reopening would have been impossible, she said, without the help and support of friends and family, her landlords, Harry and Wanda Pincus, who charged her no rent during the construction phase, Bradenton City Councilman Bill Sanders, who championed the restaurant, and contractor Shawn Matthews who worked with her through the twists and turns of the complex project.
Patrick Boucher, Jodi’s 31-year-old son, works at Theresa’s Restaurant several days a week, and said customers always asked when the eatery would be reopening.
”A couple walked up and asked if we would still have the chicken tortellini soup,” Patrick Boucher said.
Well, the answer is yes. The menu items customers remember, including the most popular item on the breakfast and lunch menu, the chicken salad sandwich on grilled cinnamon raisin toast with Swiss cheese, are all still available.
While Theresa’s has distinct breakfast and lunch menus, everything is offered anytime during business hours, including items not on the menu, as long as the restaurant has the ingredients.
“Why not?” Patrick said. “We have our signature staples, but we are very accommodating.”
Jodi Boucher says all the well wishes and congratulatory messages she has received since reopening mean more than she can say.
Among them was a video message from Robert Irvine, that she is shared on Theresa’s Facebook page.
“Congratulations on the opening of the new Theresa’s. I will be coming there soon,” Irvine said on the video, made during a break from filming another segment of his TV show. “I’m in the middle of another ‘Restaurant: Impossible’ and you know how that goes. God bless you. Have a great grand opening.”
Theresa’s is open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday-Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, call 941-896-4166.
