“Arborland was a ghost town,” recalls Mike Roddy. Thirty years ago, when he and wife, Bridget Roddy (nee Sperrazza), went looking for restaurant locations, the shopping center anchoring the Washtenaw strip was reeling after a failed remodeling. Downtown, Briarwood, and Plymouth Rd. were all possibilities, but after seven years managing the Red Bull, a popular steakhouse owned by Bridget’s father just across US-23, they never ruled out Washtenaw. When the onetime Bimbo’s on the Hill became available, they bought and renovated it to create Paesano.
Being restaurateurs wasn’t always on the couple’s radar. They met in college in Florida, where Mike was on a baseball scholarship; Bridget planned to teach. As newlyweds the couple moved to Cleveland, Mike’s hometown, where he worked as an auditor for the state of Ohio, and Bridget taught school. But they dreamed of being self-employed.
When Bridget’s father first suggested they move to Ann Arbor and take over the restaurant, they rejected the offer. But after marinating the idea for a while, they decided to keep their day jobs and experiment: Mike took a second job washing dishes at a Big Boy, while Bridget got a job at another restaurant as a hostess.
“As a dishwasher I realized that this is a very big people business,” Mike says–and not all that different from baseball: “It was putting a team on the field, making them happy, standing amongst them, and working with them.” He quit his day job and spent four years working his way through fast-food, theme, and fine dining restaurants. They moved to Ann Arbor in 1977 and opened Paesano in August 1984.
With the exception of recession-depressed 2009, business has gotten better every year since. Arborland found its niche in big-box stores, while the new Arbor Hills Crossing has reaffirmed their long-ago bet on destination dining on the strip. Praising Bigalora and Zola Bistro as “high-end, high-quality small operators,” he says they’re excited to be surrounded by new neighbors along a re-energized and re-imagined Washtenaw.
