Mo’s Pub and Eatery in Langley will pour its last pint and serve its final plate of fish and chips this weekend.
The popular bar and restaurant on Second Street, which has drawn persistent criticism from neighbors over noise since opening in 2011, will close Sunday, Dec. 13.
“I’ve been kicking around the food and beverage industry for 51 years, so it’s time for me to semi-retire,” owner Maureen Cooke said.
“I think it’s time for some new blood,” she added.
Cooke, 73, is in the process of selling the building to unnamed owners from Whidbey Island, whom Cooke said wished to remain anonymous at this time. The details of the sale were undisclosed and unavailable through public records because the deal will not be closed until January.
Cooke has owned the building since 1997. She first opened it as The Kitchen Shop Etc., until 2000.
“I closed The Kitchen Shop because I’d sold everything to every single lady on the island,” she said. “And the next generation doesn’t cook. They make reservations.”
She and late-husband Ray Cooke opened The Fish Bowl in 2001. The 10-table restaurant specialized in seafood, but struggled when the economic recession hit in 2009 at the same time Cooke said seafood costs spiked, making it a not viable business at the time.
Mo’s Pub and Eatery — the tagline on the wooden sign over the front door reads “A place to drink and throw sharp objects” — was created like an English-style pub. Langley travel writer Sue Frause and Bernita Sanstad created the name, and Cooke came up with the tagline, as well as the dark green shirts that read “I got bangered and smashed at Mo’s.”
It opened in 2011 and quickly found a crowd eager for a watering hole. Langley had been without a true bar since the Dog House Tavern closed a couple of years earlier. That’s why Cooke even pursued the pub, saying she saw a need in town and knew there was money to be made.
One Langley resident who has been a regular at Mo’s Pub since its opening said he was sad to see it go.
“It’s been great,” Eli D’Elena said.
“I used to come when it was The Fish Bowl. I remember the tiki bar. I used to come bug her [Cooke],” he added.
Not long after she opened, neighbor complaints began trickling into city hall and to Cooke about crowd and music noise. The restaurant is located on the edge of the city’s central business district, which buffers its residential areas. Just across the property line north on Second Street is a home.
The battle between neighbors, Mo’s Pub and the city has been ongoing.
“I understand the neighbors’ concern with people leaving and saying, ‘Bye Ben! See ya!’” said Cooke, who added that she thought the problem was partly the city’s fault for not creating a buffer zone between residences and the business district.
Cooke, despite being the owner and having a staff that swelled to 20 employees during the summer but is currently down to 10, is still happy to get in the kitchen when more hands are needed to work the fryers or prepare salads. During the recent Seahawks game on Dec. 6, Cooke said the kitchen was understaffed after an employee did not make it in, so she jumped into the back-of-house to “orchestrate” the cooking.
Selling the building is not a sign of her riding off into the sunset land of retirement. Cooke is staying on Whidbey Island and still has a business to manage at Whidbey Island Cannabis Company in Bayview. She said she plans to travel more, and already has destinations in Tucson, Ariz., Washington D.C. and Alaska planned.
“While on this side of the dirt, I want to travel,” she said.
“I’ll be around if anybody wants to harass me,” she added.
Langley city staff and elected officials spent time in late 2014 trying to find solutions to quell residents’ ire over noise.
In response to the complaints, Cooke tasked staff to keep crowds inside at night and to remind them to be quiet when they were outside on the patio. But policing them once they left the bar and got cabs or walked to their cars was a different matter, and more frequently in the past couple of years the complaints centered around after-hours noise along the parking spots on Second Street.
Cooke said she developed a reputation as being salty. Recalling a story of asking a gentleman who used a table as a makeshift office while rarely ordering anything to respect that Mo’s Pub was a business, she said she did so “because I’m cranky.”
The restaurant and bar’s final day, Dec. 13, will include an early 10 a.m. opening for the Seahawks game, live music from Timothy Hull and the Western Heroes, and Cooke trying to sell off the memorabilia hung from the walls. Final call for the last Mo’s Pub pomikaze — a pomegranate vodka, pomegranate liqueur and lime drink — or Mac and Jack’s will come when it comes, which Cooke said was “probably” going to come late.