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Editor’s Note: This story was published in March 2016. MoMo’s Too has been open since.
Rich Comunale said the concept behind MoMo’s Sports Bar & Grill in Holbrook boils down to six words.
“Customer service. Customer service. Customer service.”
OK, so that’s two words repeated three times. But the point is clear.
The people come first.
That’s also the concept behind MoMo’s Too, which he and his wife, Tracey, are set to open Sunday on Montauk Highway in Bayport — in the old Parrot Bar & Grill building.
“It’s a place where everybody knows your name,” Tracey said of MoMo’s, which Rich Comunale, a 1998 Patchogue-Medford graduate, opened in May of 2009.
And the staff helps facilitate that knowing-your-name thing.
“Nobody comes in here without being asked what their name is,” Rich Comunale emphasized. “I always say, this place is built on forming relationships with everyone who walks through the doors.”
Both husband and wife have hospitality experience that predates MoMo’s.
Before opening the first MoMo’s in Holbrook, Rich Comunale worked as a bartender for seven years at Fridays Farmingville, during which time he said he learned a lot about customer service and quality control.
Tracey Comunale, a 1997 graduate of Pat-Med, used to waitress in the building that now houses MoMo’s Too, back when it was called The Garage Bar & Grill.
Even though they went to school together — and grew up a block away from each other in Medford — the two never met before they chatted for the first time at MoMO’s in Holbrook.
They married in 2012.
Tracey said this opening is especially exciting for her, because its the first restaurant the two are opening as a married couple.
“Rich and I had been wanting to open something together,” she said.
How the Farmingville couple came to settle on Bayport isn’t exactly the stuff of Hollywood romance, Tracey admitted.
“He was at Restaurant Depot and the owner of Parrots said he wanted to sell,” she said.
The new MoMo’s — we’ll just leave it to Urban Dictionary for a description of what that means — features 2,000 square feet of interior dining space, as well as three outdoor decks and 15 outdoor tables.
Aside from food and drink, the big side deck at MoMo’s Too is a place for all-day corn-hole tournaments under the sun.
They also plant to offer mini corn-hole at the inside tables, too.
They had been making a day-and-night push to wrap up the top-to-bottom renovations of the old Parrot in time for their Sunday opening.
“We’ve gotten a lot of help from our friends,” Tracey said.
And they’re about to make some new ones.
Photo: Rich and Tracey Comunale at MoMo’s Too in Bayport on Thursday. (Michael White)
